Soares' television career began at
TV Rio in 1958, writing and performing in comedy shows for the station. In 1970, he began to work at
Rede Globo. Soares moved to
SBT, in 1988, as the host of, "Jô Soares Onze e Meia", (Jô Soares [at] Eleven-Thirty [in the evening]), which aired until 1999. In 2000, he took his show's format (very similar to David Letterman's) back to Rede Globo, where it was then named, "Programa do Jô", which ran until 2016. His first novel,
O Xangô de Baker Street (translated as
A Samba for Sherlock), was published in 1995 and has been translated into several languages. It was later adapted to a movie with the
same name in 2001. Soares also put out various
jazz CDs, as well as producing many plays, including a recent version of
Richard III. ==Personal life==