TAICCA deputy CEO Lu Jiun Wei says that if Taiwanese TV dramas are to find international success, market demands must be considered at every stage—from development, to production, to marketing.
From HBO Asia’s The Teenage Psychic, which broke new ground in the Chinese-language market, and The World Between Us, which garnered high ratings both in Taiwan and abroad, to the recently released Shards of Her, which has built an impressive following by word of mouth, Taiwan’s television producers have released a steady stream of shows that have become surprising international hits.
Dogged determination and growing expertise in a variety of fields stand behind the improvements in Taiwan’s TV production ecology. The Taiwan Creative Content Agency, for instance, has tailored its policies to better suit the times, and the Taiwan Public Television Service has been working with industry to “incubate” screenplays, constantly pushing to develop shows in different genres. Meanwhile, there has been a continued emphasis on international coproductions and foreign financing, which have raised the profile of Taiwanese shows abroad. Investing in Taiwanese productions has come to be seen as a winning proposition, with more and more serials from the island available on international streaming platforms.
In October 2022, Shards of Her was released for global audiences on Netflix. A criminal investigation drama that examines the issue of power inequities and sexual assault, the show has turned into a surprise hit, lauded for its thematic content, cinematography and exquisite acting. Topping Netflix’s viewership rankings in Taiwan and Hong Kong less than two weeks after release, it has caused quite the stir, with more than 10,000 news reports and blog posts related to the show posted online. Far from the first Taiwanese production to meet with popular and critical acclaim, its remarkable showing is by no means a one-off. Apart from the hard work of its creative team, what is behind its success?
Beyond grants
It used to be that government agencies supported film and television production largely with grants. Every year they would solicit proposals and hire experts to award the grants. Lu Jiun Wei, deputy chief executive officer of the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA), explains that the focus on a few elite works could only provide marginal support to the industry as a whole. It did nothing to strengthen the foundations of the industry. Consequently, TAICCA was established as an independent organization that aims to move beyond long-term reliance on grants by focusing on building a true market for cultural content.
Once established, TAICCA pushed for revising National Development Fund regulations to allow for investment in individual production projects and to relax the conditions for NDF investments. These changes have more closely aligned NDF policies with industry needs.
The memorandums of understanding that TAICCA offers companies are but one example. So long as production teams have a track record of international coproductions or of getting their productions on foreign streaming platforms, companies are eligible to become TAICCA partners. Currently TAICCA has more than 120 memorandums of understanding, including with CJ ENM and Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM), both of South Korea, as well as with Hakka TV and Hong Kong’s ViuTV. Signatories run the gamut from production companies to streaming platforms.
Yu Pei-hua, director of the Program Department at Taiwan’s Public Television Service, believes that Taiwan production teams will only enter the global front ranks if they can accumulate more experience in shooting shows.
Incubating imagination
Long involved in the production of shows in Taiwan, Taiwan Public Television Service (PTS) has continued to release works of varied content that broaden its viewers’ imaginative horizons. Apart from increasing production funding, in 2019 it launched a plan to “incubate” dramatic serials in Taiwan, hoping to ameliorate the lack of resources for script development that had long plagued the industry.
The concept behind its incubation plan is to cover living expenses for screenwriters or producers for at least a year, so that they can devote themselves to fieldwork that yields quality in-depth scripts. After a screenplay has been incubated, there is also an opportunity to obtain PTS production funding, thus hastening the journey from script to screen.
Tears on Fire, which won Most Popular Drama Series at the 2022 Golden Bell Awards, was the first work incubated under this program.
Yu Pei-hua, director of programming at PTS, believes that shows in Taiwan will break from form and widen their imaginative horizons only if production teams experience shooting under different budgets. And even though PTS could not cover Tears on Fire’s entire production budget, they helped to arrange funding from commercial investors, enabling the series to allot NT$8 million per episode, which allowed for thrilling rescue scenes involving fires and explosions. The scriptwriting team was able to spend more than a year doing fieldwork with fire brigades. Depictions of the steadfastness with which firefighters manned their posts at the expense of their family lives, and the unreasonable demands that the public made of them as they carried out their duties, were based on the writers’ own observations of police and firefighters at work. Those first-hand experiences of the writers helped make the show so true to life.
Squid Game inspiration
As international streaming platforms have set up in Taiwan, PTS’s forward-looking planning has elevated the production values of dramatic productions. PTS has released a succession of noteworthy shows, including The World Between Us, Seqalu: Formosa 1867, and Gold Leaf. These have continued to deepen production teams’ experience.
International streaming platforms are accustomed to buying exclusive broadcast rights. Although going this route allows production companies to obtain higher payouts, it precludes the shows from being watched on local television or local streaming platforms, limiting commercial opportunities for local distribution channels. If this approach becomes the norm, then international platforms will monopolize the best shows. Daphne Yang, CEO of CatchPlay, a Taiwan streaming and multimedia company, believes that giving international platforms control over the success or failure of local productions will not be a good thing for the industry’s long-term development.
She gives the example of Squid Game, a Korean drama that has garnered a lot of attention in recent years. It became a topic of conversation around the world and yielded Netflix possibly more than US$100 million in profits. Yet the subsequent economic benefits didn’t contribute to the development of Korea’s film industry. As an industry insider herself, Yang is growing worried about this state of affairs. If nothing is done, Taiwanese TV production companies will increasingly lose power over their own creative space.
Consequently, for Season 2 of The Making of an Ordinary Woman, CatchPlay’s Screenworks Asia concluded that the conditions demanded by foreign platforms were not advantageous to Taiwan’s local platforms. Chen Shaoyi, senior director of content production for Screenworks Asia, explains that after struggling with the issue for a period, they eventually insisted that the show be broadcast on CatchPlay, CTS and other Taiwanese channels. “The hope was that outstanding dramatic content would give Taiwanese platforms a chance for continued growth.”
Daphne Yang, CEO of CatchPlay (left) and Chen Shaoyi, senior director of content production for CatchPlay’s Screenworks Asia, bring international marketing experience to television production, helping Taiwanese shows locate foreign financing and production partners. The goal is for these shows to make their mark overseas.
Steering toward the global market
Sensing the trend toward streaming, CatchPlay, a multimedia firm that started as a distribution agency and investor in the film industry, launched its digital streaming platform CatchPlay+ in 2016. Realizing the limits of Taiwan’s market, Yang looked overseas and worked with Indonesian and Singaporean telecoms companies to offer local versions of CatchPlay+. It was the first over-the-top (OTT) media service to successfully enter the Indonesian market.
In 2019 Yang realized that The World Between Us would have international potential and went all out to gain the rights to distribute it. Apart from placing it on the company’s own CatchPlay+ streaming platform, she also worked with HBO to give the show visibility in international markets, proving that local platforms can provide overseas opportunities for locally produced shows.
To strengthen the development of drama series in Taiwan, CatchPlay worked with TAICCA to establish Screenworks Asia, with the intention of adding content development experience from international markets to the filmmaking process. The aim was to attract foreign financing early on, in the development stage, as well as later during distribution. Twisted Strings, which won the Golden Bell for Best Miniseries in 2022, was coproduced with Singapore’s Mediacorp. “This allowed the show not only to have a market in Taiwan but also to use international strategic collaboration to make its mark in the wider world,” explains Chen.
Multinational productions in full swing
The industry has been working non-stop to improve its approaches to bringing Taiwan productions to the international market. By inviting international buyers to the Taiwan Creative Content Fest, TAICCA leverages the event as a means of enabling Taiwan firms with intellectual properties of high potential to connect with the international market.
Meanwhile GrX Company, noting that Japan has a similar culture to Taiwan, is looking to penetrate the Japanese market. To that end, it bought the rights to the novel The Copycat by the Japanese author Miyuki Miyabe. By creating a drama set in Taiwan with material familiar to Japanese, they anticipate the show will gain a Japanese following on Netflix, where it will be exclusively available to stream.
CatchPlay has long observed and cultivated the markets of Indonesia and Singapore, with ties to those nations growing ever tighter. For instance, its original series Losmen Melati was a three-way coproduction with Indonesia’s Infinite Studios and Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority, while Lesley in Taipei: Grass Jelly Bubble Tea is a Taiwanese–Indonesian coproduction with both sides involved in developing the show’s screenplays. It describes an ethnic-Chinese Indonesian Internet celebrity who comes to Taipei to live out her dreams. With a rich storyline woven from multinational perspectives, the show’s producers hope it will stir up a new craze for things Taiwanese in Southeast Asia.
Whether in terms of the shows themselves, the people who create them, or the investment environment that fosters their development, Taiwan’s TV production industry is moving from strength to strength as it pushes into the international arena.
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