From various letters, ‘Local dramas of low quality’, 6 Nov 2010, Mailbag, Life!
(C.Y Ng): …The scripts (Channel 8 dramas) are predictable. For example, a woman always becomes suicidal after she is raped. The dialogue is cliched and occasionally sexist. Please fire the scriptwriters.
(Foo Ai Luan): Local dramas should learn from Taiwan (for the language) or Hong Kong (for the script quality).
(Gilchrist Chun Han): Watching an episode of Channel 8 drama is like having all your teeth extracted without anaesthesia.
(Harold Ng): I would rather watch whales and dolphins in their natural habitat than Mediacorp actors who cannot act.
Not a fan of Channel 8 dramas myself, though I have to admit as a child of the 80′s without exposure to cable or the internet, I vaguely remember humming along to the theme songs of serials involving the air force, gangsters and something about kopi-o. I believe the golden age of the industry has come and gone, with audiences’ expectations of quality soaring in the wake of happy slapping Taiwanese dramas. Questioning the quality of acting is like lamenting our lack of talented athletes. We’re just too small and too busy a population to produce fine actors, not to mention creative scriptwriters, considering that all possible plots have been squeezed dry the past, what, 30 years or so? Viewers also can’t decide if they want more original scripts or to follow Taiwan and Hong Kong’s example, and as for raped characters, if suicidal thoughts on the part of the victim is a cliche, then so is the victim overcoming adversity and the rapist getting his just desserts. That’s what audiences really want in the end: a happy ending, which most viewers are reluctant to admit, thrives on cliche, the very plot device everyone’s complaining about. Still I wouldn’t go so far to proclaim involuntary tooth extraction as more enjoyable than watching Channel 8 drama. That honour more deservedly goes to ‘sitting through the bone-crushing cringefest that is the Phua Chu Kang movie’.
Filed under: 2010, Corporations, Local actors, Local TV shows Tagged: | channel 8 drama, Local actors, local TV, mediacorp tv
