Rebelde

Rebelde remakes a TV telenovela, not a book. Its source is Rebelde Way, an Argentine teen series created by Cris Morena that aired from 2002 to 2003, and there is no novel behind either show. For anyone who loved Rebelde and wants to go back to the source, the Argentine series is the place to look. It offers the Elite Way story as first conceived, set in Argentina, with its own cast and Erreway's music in place of RBD's. It is a way to see where the characters, the boarding-school rivalries and the idea of a school band all started.

Mexico City replaces Argentina as the setting, with Elite Way School recast as a private boarding high school there. The whole show was reworked for Mexican viewers, and the characters' backgrounds reportedly differ from those in the Argentine original as a result. The Mexican version also ran longer: three seasons from 2004 to 2006, against the original's two seasons and 318 episodes in 2002 and 2003. The music changed hands too. Its cast formed the real band RBD, who play the bandmates and perform most of the songs, while the original's music came from Erreway. The Mexican version also gave its posh 'fresa' characters a habit of dropping English words and phrases into their speech. No reliable comparison of the two storylines has turned up, including how each one ends. As far as is known, the remake follows its source broadly, but how closely the plot matches remains unconfirmed.