Thoughts on Filipino Drama?

Hi! Just want to hear your thoughts on Filipino Drama? In comparison to Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese Dramas, I think our dramas isn't really that loved by the asian people.  Even we Filipinos, in our watchlist most dramas are not filipino drama.

What do you think?

Hi Queenjr!

Thanks for sharing your view.

Yes I agree, our dramas are long and some predictable. However, I really want our dramas to be appreciated too by other nationalities, just like how we like their dramas.. 

I hope they will also have some strong dramas that tackle culture and sensitive topics, like Korea's "Pinocchio" that tackles media have you seen that one? or "My Husband Got a Family" which tackles family traditions against modern belief. I really wish we have those kind of dramas.

and yeah, TV networks really doesn't want their dramas readily available in public, maybe loss of profit they deem?

What turns me off from Philippine TV dramas are (1) their numerous but extremely short episodes, (2) lack of coherence, and (3) cliched and unrealistic elements. And these could also be the reasons why our dramas are not appreciated by other countries.

It's obvious we still follow the pattern of Latin American telenovelas. These short episodes usually do not tell a standalone story on their own. You have to piece several short episodes together to see a single plot line, and I do not have the patience for that.  

Many Philippine dramas also fall victim to their lack of coherence. Take Inday Will Always Love You, for example. It started with the premise that Happylou is a simple girl who moves to Cebu and will fall in love with her boss, Patrick (very cliched plot btw). The show was quite interesting because it promised to explore the Cebuano culture, which is uncommon in Philippine dramas since most of our shows are set in the capital.  However, all of those are not the focus of the show now; it now focuses on the struggles of Happylou and her family in the hands of Amanda. The Cebuano culture exploration? Forgotten for the sake of repeating the cliched drama of a rich woman terrorizing the girl who loves her son.

Latin American telenovelas also influenced the kinds of plot elements that most Philippine dramas have, and most of them are cliched and unrealistic. The cliched villainous woman who's rich and has goons, which we adopted from Latin American telenovelas, is so tiring already, but the trope still appears in many of our dramas (see example above) because it's an easy way to put conflict, which screams LAZY to me. Most of the plots, too, are unrealistic, which makes me feel detached from them, and as a viewer, it is important for me to relate to the story. While I do not expect our shows to feature LGBT+ leads that I could relate with, even our hetero leads are hard to relate with. Do you know a girl terrorized by her boyfriend's mother?  

I see some shows trying to break the norm, but most are unsuccessful given the country's political climate and the viewers' non-acceptance of change.

'on the wings of love' and 'til i met you' starring the famous couple  nadine and james.. . are those 2 dramas worth watching despite its lengths?

The problem I got with Filipino dramas, (hey, a Filipino here) they are milking the popular Series or Title if they got the viewers' favor or rating which usually lasts 3 years and above (e.g. Ang Probisyano) and cliched story like secret affair where A cheats with B when A is married with C etc.

We seem to have a culture where everytime the man cheats, the wife’s only option seems to be to attack the third party without holding the married man accountable for his actions.  It was like that during my grandma’s time, and sadly it is the same now. I can’t recall how many times I’ve seen videos of a wife attacking her husband’s ‘kabit’ (mistress/girlfriend); I’ve had a housekeeper who left the province to go to the main city and she did that because she was looking for her husband who dumped her for another woman. She was going to beg him to take her back. Just the other day, the Abs Cbn newsite released an article on cheating- but in it, they imply that the reason the man cheats is because the wife was ‘lacking’ in some way, and that they needed to discuss the issue. The only thing good about the article is that it says that there’s no point in ‘attacking the third party’ because your husband will just cheat again. At least they got that right! But there is no mention of the problem being the fault of the man. It is always the assumption that it’s the wife who is to blame.

Most viewers of Philippine dramas still have that old fashioned mentality- another reason why the way they treat adultery in dramas needs to change.  Right now, there’s another upcoming drama where the heroine gets involved with a married man...done a lot of times already; is this really someone we want to look up to?

If they want to make a drama that has adultery in it, why not something like ‘The Fierce Wife’ 

(Spoiler)

where the wife does the right thing and dumps the cheating husband’s ass? That would be someone to look up to.

I notice that the Philippines and Italy have that in common- their cinema seems to show adultery in a positive light. Ironic, since they are both catholic countries.

I think one way of dealing with that on film is to at least show the cheater (the married man) punished for his actions and maybe repent his ways. They don’t even show that in the script. In ‘Etiquette for Mistresses’  one of cheaters was even portrayed like some kind of saint. When he had a heart attack, story shows him in hiding with his mistress. The wife and daughter didnt know where he was and they were really worried about him- the script made it seem like it was their fault, and that he was this poor little victim entrapped by marriage.

Religion or not, it’s not right for these scripts to keep portraying this cheating men as if they didn’t do anything wrong. I honestly don’t know why such movies even get made but well, there you have it.  

For the record, i don’t think this means that filipinos cheat more than others- i believe it’s the same everywhere (korea, japan, the usa, etc) i just don’t like the way it’s treated on script. I wish these writers would come up with better ideas. 

I am happy now that production media companies in the Philippines are now stepping up. They now show a canned series/series that is finished shooting and they don't rely on tv ratings like Init sa Magdamag and La Vida Lena of ABS-CBN, and Legal Wives and The World Between Us of GMA. 

They now also make a short series that only have 5 to 12 episodes like He's Into Her, Oh Mando!, My Sunset Girl, Unloving U, I am U, Taiwan That You Love, and Bagman where the lead actor won Best Actor in Asia Academy Creative Awards.