I used to hate Chinese TV mini-series. A few years ago they seem to be evenly split between insipid soap operas starring actress that seemed to be reading their lines just left of the camera, kung-fu history dramas with lots of indiscernable acrobatic fight scenes,and War War II history series featuring top ten reasons to hate the Japanese.  It always seemed that anyone, and I means just about anyone, with a HD camera and a tripod could make a bad TV Mini.  All they had to do was stretch a two hour story into a 40 episode nightmare and shoot all 40 in less than three months. 

 

But recently, there's been a steady rise in the level of good Chinese TV Mini-series.  I used to mock my mother's nightly campaign of channel surfing.  She would try her best to click between two stations as she tuned into two series at once.  The series would come out rapid fire, two to three episode blocks everyday for a month. But in the last few years, I fould myself sitting down to watch them with her.  The quality, I must admit, is getting much much better.  Gone now are the wobbly green tinted DV shot where you can see the shadow of the camera operator.  Gone are the scripts that feature 100 renditions of the line "I love you so much. Why do you ignore me?". The directors now seemed to have graduated from descent film schools, the camera operators know what depth means, and script writers are doing more than just stretching scenes out as long as possible. Even the actors are getting less pretty and better at acting.

 

What's more stunning is that the mini-series is becoming a kind of national news culture, picking up current events and buildling off of them with the kind of speed that used to be expected only from the west.  The censorship that used to be the dictator of content has also taken a strange turn for the liberal side.  I was watching with jaws agape at a recent prime-time mini that featured a story line I never thought could have passed Chinese censorship.  The story-line featured local police who were being bribed and handled by a kidnap and prostitution establishment with government connections, and one brave cop's difficult political journey to stop the prostitution.  Another mini-series featured a story about how the Nationalists helped out the Communists during World War II.  Even through it still boasted at least ten reasons to the hate the Japanese, suprisingly, the story had "American" heroes as well. In past mini's the victory in War War II used to be attributed soley to the Communist party. There's even been a great number of fantastic recent history mini-series featuring people who lived through the tumultuous Cultural Revolution and all the the injustices and stupidities of that era depicted in surprisingly truthful detail. One great line went roughly something like, "Look how much you've given to the party, and they put you in a dunghill." 

 

Media in China has always been a mix of entertainment and propoganda, so whenever the content starts to change, I always wearily ask myself what's the catch.  Just 20 years ago, when most people still lived in housing that didn't have flushing toilets, the official line had always been "Everything is beautiful. Everything is great!"  A cloud never floated over Zhong Nan Hai unless some other country put it there, and the Government was always good.  If you listen to the Nightly National News, that's still mostly the message today.  Everywhere else is bad, but China is perfect (or in the process of developing perfection).  But meanwhile in the land of TV drama's -- corruption, greed, sex, intrigue, bad guys in a powerful places, historical adjustments on long accepted lies, even the occasional apology to the left behind rural villagers whom have never had their share of China's Rapid Development.

 

Mind you, the criticism of government never goes beyond the local level, and in the good cop vs. bad cop senario, the good cop always wins. No matter how wiggly the story goes along the way, the bad guys always get their just deserts and it's mary bloody sunshine at the end of the day.  But still, thinking back on the days as a producer and reading my huge bible of politically unacceptable things in programming, this new era of TV mini's is inspiring me to think. . . hmmm what's next.

 

Has China's new leadership been convinced that freedom of artistic expression is the only way to create a great culture and not just functional country? Or is this just another form of public brain-washing to serve some new political agendas?  Does this mean that after the Olympics, China will see increasing open public debate about serious political issues? Or will things go back to normal, and insipid story lines featuring acting factory produced pretty boys and girls to be the mind placebos of the next decade?

 

It's hard to say, but I can make one possible connection between the rising freedom to tackle possibly insindiary topics like corruption, social inequalities, and historical injustices with the rise of the confidence in the current Chinese leaders.  After recent political referredums including -- the start of a subsidies system for farmers, nationalized free or cheap healthcare for rural residents, and new programs to slowly remove the registration system that greatly damaged the ability of migrant workers to educated their future generations -- the new government no longer seems to fear a massive uprising of the poor discontent. 

 

The new campaign is education. The financial network teachs the average retiree how to figure out the maze of the stock market.  The law shows run through the complicated rules of China's still establishing legal system. The regional networks goes so far as to teach farmers what's the acceptable amount of fertilizer to use in different types of soil. At the heart of this blend of social messages, education on social responsibility, and mass entertainment is the TV-Mini.  In recent years their main moral themes seem to come less from Communism and more from Confusciusism and Taoism.

 

Perhaps it all comes down to one simple political fact. When you no longer fear your people, you no longer need to keep your people in blind hate and fear to control them. You can allow them to get the information and make logical choices, in line with the governments logical descisions. (Perhaps the U.S. is best model of the antithesis of that senario).

 

Still, before we give all the big massive heads too much credit, lets not forget that censorship is still very very prevalent.  There are some issues, which we will not mention here, that will never be addressed.  There are still some regions which which remain under a terrible and unfair pressure from the central state whom will never be allowed to freely voice their grievances.  Certain things in the next few years will not appear in the TV-Mini, and if they do, they will not be broadcasted.  But let's hope the current trend continues, and China will continue to be more confident, better guided, more open, and that we will all ultimately get better television.