Jassi goes to America!

Ashley Jensen, Cicily Daniels, America Ferrera and Kristen Schall in a scene from "Ugly Betty" on ABC.

HOW a modest Colombian telenovela about a pitifully ugly woman trying to navigate the shallow waters of the fashion industry became one of the world's most popular television shows is a Cinderella story of its own, one more unlikely than even the most optimistic screenwriter could imagine.

By the end of its two-year run — 340 half-hour episodes, all written by Mr. Gaitn — "Yo Soy Betty La Fea" was Colombia's most popular telenovela, pulling in three million viewers a night. Betty's every move became a national obsession.

That show, "Yo Soy Betty La Fea" ("I Am Betty the Ugly"), could have been another one of the telenovelas — the nightly soap operas featuring a breathless blend of camp, melodrama and cliffhanger — that dominate primetime programming in Colombia. So Mr. Gaitn created Beatriz Pinzn Solano, a woman with brains (Betty holds a master's degree in economics), a heart (she is caretaker to her aging father) and a face so unfortunately contoured that it comes as a relief to find her forehead hidden under a fringe of oily black bangs.

Soon production companies from around the world came calling, snatching up the rights not to rebroadcast the show but faithfully to remake it. In India, Betty became Jassi, and the show, "There's No One Like Jassi," was an instant smash. Other versions followed — in Germany as "Falling in Love in Berlin," in the Netherlands as "Lotte," in Russia as "Born Ugly." They all tweaked the tone of the original (the German version all but excised the comedy) but kept the ugly duckling storyline intact.