Lifetime’s ‘Devious Maids’ Will Now Air Show In Spanish

In a first for an English language network, Lifetime is offering a pre-linear sneak peek of its ‘Devious Maids‘ pilot in English and Spanish set for June 9th, 2 weeks before its on-air premiere.

Post-premiere, the network will make each episode of Devious Maids available in both English and Spanish across these platforms the day after its Sunday 10:00 pm ET/PT airing. For its linear telecast, Devious Maids will be available in Spanish to standard definition viewers via the second audio program service.

Executive producers Eva Longoria has a lot riding on this show since her previous effort with NBC – “Ready for Love”– was a dreadful flop. If America doesn’t embrace this show, her career as a producer will look bleak moving forward. Then again look at M. Night Shyamalan‘s career.

Regarding the announcement of going in Spanish, Rob Sharenow, Executive Vice President, General Manager, of Lifetime, noted, “We are thrilled to work with our distribution partners on making Devious Maids available in both English and Spanish to maximize the show’s crossover appeal among the broadest range of their customers.”

For those who still don’t know what this show is about yet, it’s based on a hit Televisa novela from Mexico called Ellas son la Alegría del Hogar.

The question moving forward is, if Devious Maids is a hit with American audiences, will novelas be the new source of content for English language networks? And if so, will NBC and FOX begin to use Telemundo and MundoFox as their principal source? If they do, both networks might just see a huge lift immediately. ABC already has a partnership with Univision and Televisa, which is most likely how ‘Maids’ was created.

I’ll be keeping an eye out on this show and reviewing the pilot and its controversial stereotype allegations in the next few days.

‘Devious Maids’ stars an all-Latina cast – Ana Ortiz (Ugly Betty), Dania Ramirez (Entourage), Roselyn Sanchez (Without a Trace), Edy Ganem (Living Loud) and Judy Reyes (Scrubs)