# Tell Me How It Happened (2007)

> A middle-class Lisbon family navigates the final years of Portugal's Estado Novo dictatorship and its aftermath.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/57260

## Facts

- Seasons: 8
- Episodes: 156
- Episode runtime: 50 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama, family
- Created by: Miguel Ángel Bernardeau
- Network: RTP1
- Cast: Miguel Guilherme, Rita Blanco, Luís Ganito, Carolina Agostinho, Catarina Avelar, Rita Brütt, Fernando Pires, Luís Lucas
- TMDB rating: 8.7/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1018269/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: mild
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: none
- Tone: nostalgic, warm, observational, melancholic, gentle

## Synopsis

Tell Me How It Happened (Conta-me Como Foi, 2007-present) is a Portuguese national-television family drama created by Miguel Ángel Bernardeau for RTP1. Its engine is the everyday life of the middle-class Lopes family in Lisbon, led by António Lopes (Miguel Guilherme) and Margarida Marques Lopes (Rita Blanco), whose domestic concerns of work, marriage, money and children play out against the constraints of the Estado Novo dictatorship. Supporting roles include Luís Ganito as Carlos 'Carlitos' Lopes, Catarina Avelar as Hermínia Marques and Rita Brütt as Maria Isabel Lopes, and a recurring narrator, played by Luís Lucas, frames the family's chronicle. Episodes are built around small household crises and generational friction rather than sweeping events. The series runs across eight seasons and 156 episodes, with a long break before its later run, and the story advances into the 1980s as the family ages. The tone is warm, nostalgic and observational, with quiet melancholy beneath the domestic comedy. Fans of The Wonder Years, Downton Abbey and Heartbeat will find resonance in its intimate, period-tinged portrait of ordinary people living through history.

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