 Many show-business journalists placed little confidence on the success of such a story, which was so radically different from both the classic soap opera and the then relatively new movement of "Telenovela Cultural".The telenovela was surrounded by a lot of controversies, mostly related to an alleged glorification of violence and crime, and with the ripped-off-the-headlines late nature of the story.One of the most notable controversies was related to a boy actor who played a street kid and who became a precocious criminal.