#How awesome is the prototype of "I'm a Criminal Police"? ##Two extras in "I'm a Criminal Police" are actually real police officers! #How much little-known knowledge is hidden in "The Code of Along the River During the Qingming Festival"? #In the last month of 2024, China Central Radio and Television Station has launched a series of major dramas and continued to output topics. Although winter is cold, the screens are steaming hot.
Going back one year, on December 15, 2023, 38 works made their wonderful debut at the "Watch the Dragon Year Dramas on CCTV" TV series list release event. Just over ten days later, "Fanhua" detonated the 2024 drama market.
This year, many CCTV dramas that you and I have followed together are on the list of winners of the 17th Spiritual Civilization Construction "Five One Project" Outstanding Works Award, the 34th "Flying Apsaras Award", the 29th Shanghai TV Festival "Magnolia Award", etc. This is not only the real feedback from the market, but also a strong proof of the high-quality creation, innovative expression and excellent reputation of domestic dramas.
Three key words can be extracted from the 2024 drama-chasing report issued by the Central Radio and Television Station - facing the times, touching people's hearts, and facing challenges head-on.
Face the times:
Good works should look to the times below
Realistic works have always been the forte of CCTV's dramas, reflecting the CCTV's spirit of always keeping the "big things of the country" in mind and concentrating on creating high-quality masterpieces.
This year, the main theme was expressed more richly, with genre integration, innovative themes, and new aspects of creation. "Asking the Vastness", "The Battle of Shangganling", "Towards the Southwest", and "Northwest Years" integrated history and the present in the serious narrative of serious dramas, and more three-dimensional writing and more youthful expression made the stories of the ancestors "ignite".
"The Wind Chaser" and "When Flowers Bloom in the Mountain" have broadened the boundaries of genre innovation. The "spy war + finance" and "lofty + interesting" "powerful settings" have made the audience addicted; "I Am a Criminal Police" has returned to the realistic narrative technique and documentary-like shooting style, and has adapted real cases to connect the development process of grassroots criminal investigation. It has also become the first criminal investigation drama with over 10,000 online views.
This year, realistic themes have higher intentions, deeper thinking and wider influence, and drama stories have become a mirror of the issues of the times. "City in the City" focuses on anti-corruption in the financial sector, looking through the brilliance of human nature and self-redemption in the "besieged city"; "Boundless Future" shows the professional ideals and fighting spirit of contemporary young financial practitioners; "City of Sunshine" creates the first urban life drama in Tibet, talking about the ideal light of the plateau; "Sea and Sky Eagle" pays tribute to heroes and tells the little-known stories of Chinese carrier-based aircraft pilots.
This year, while emphasizing texture, period dramas also focused on using dramatic power and the beauty of images to care for social emotions. "The Song of Time" tells how companies move forward in the tide, presenting the experience and thinking behind China's profound changes and great progress; "South to North" spans across China's north and south and travels through 40 years to show the deep relationship between a pair of train police officers; "The Story of Roses" depicts a contemporary love epic of women through a 20-year time span, deeply exploring women's independence and self-realization.
Straight to the heart:
Good works should illuminate each other's souls
The top three domestic dramas rated by Douban this year, "When Flowers Bloom in the Mountain", "My Altay" and "City of Sunshine" were all exclusively premiered on CCTV-1. Among them, "When Flowers Bloom in the Mountain" is quite typical.
This TV series, adapted from the true story of Zhang Guimei, the winner of the "July 1st Medal", has a viewership rate of over 2% and a Douban score of 9.6, becoming the highest-rated domestic drama this year. This reflects the content iteration of domestic dramas: good works must not only consider the theme and the value of the subject matter, but also require characters and emotional concentration that are worth savoring repeatedly. Only by letting the story remain in the audience's "emotional corridor" can we connect fiction and reality and transform the charm of the story into the power of life. In "When the Mountain Flowers Bloom", Teacher Zhang Guimei is no longer just a symbol of the education world, but also a people's teacher with a strong personality, flesh and blood, clear likes and dislikes, and who will give you a few words from time to time.
In response to these heartfelt "illuminations", CCTV dramas have also produced masterpieces of different categories in terms of life themes. "Ordinary People's Song" constructs a vivid and realistic urban group portrait through trivial life bits and pieces. It uses plain tones to show the struggles of ordinary people, and uses humorous expressions to resolve the anxiety of life, composing an extraordinary song of ordinary people.
In addition, a series of dramas such as "Fireworks Family", "Thank You for Warming Me Up", "Young Couple", and "Good Reunion" have also left a warm and deep mark on this year, allowing the audience to draw spiritual nourishment from the wider world and other people's stories.
Rising to the challenge:
Good works should open up a better future
In addition to "facing the times" and "touching people's hearts", "deep thinking, quick action, and hard work" constitute another major feature of CCTV's drama creation - facing challenges. Faced with the ever-shortening length of a single episode, intensified plot twists, and the audience's increasingly common double-speed viewing, "Flowers", "My Altay", "Celebrating Yu Nian 2", etc., respectively reflect the high standards, new perspectives, and good models that CCTV's TV dramas adhere to.
The 2024 opening drama "Fang Hua" can be said to be "hot for a whole year". Compared with letting the audience pay attention to the ups and downs of the characters' fate, it hopes that the audience will take the initiative to bring emotions and mobilize experience, empathize and understand the characters, and enter the emotional atmosphere and expression system painstakingly created by the story. Those broken time and space and detached emotions not only come from Wong Kar-wai's non-linear narrative and fragmented editing techniques, but also leave more possibilities for the combination and interweaving of characters, emotions, events, and time, thereby constructing a unique narrative rhythm.
"My Altay" is the first online drama broadcast by CCTV. It has the temperament of "no matter how bumpy life is, you must live it brilliantly" and was once called a "cyber oxygen-breathing drama" and a "spiritual habitat" by the audience. It not only leads the audience to deeply experience the pure nature of Altay, but also allows people to see the typicality and timeliness of the series' innovations in Chinese narrative, frontier writing, and prose adaptation.
This "new vision" is also reflected in the deep integration of the drama and cultural tourism: 20 days after the show was aired, the total number of tourists received by Altay reached 2.86 million, a year-on-year increase of 42.05%, and tourism revenue increased by 77.98% year-on-year. As the chief producer of "My Altay" said: "The story grew out of Altay, and the film also gave back to the land to some extent."
"Joy of Life 2" has brought returns and confidence to the long-running drama market in terms of business, becoming the first TV series on the entire network to have tens of millions of reservations. More important than returns is that developing a national IP requires determination, patience, and foresight. The reason why long-term IP incubation is difficult is not only that its dividends cannot be verified or even predicted in the short term, but also requires a complete long-term development path and industrial chain support from IP source reserves, content distribution to commercial value expansion. Literary IPs such as "Joy of Life 2", "The Story of Roses", and "The Code of Along the River During the Qingming Festival" have been popular on the screen this year, and will guide more domestic IPs to embark on a path of high-quality, long-term, integrated, and coordinated development. This is the future of domestic drama IPs that we are more looking forward to.
This annual report of CCTV's drama series directly faces the times, touches people's hearts, and meets challenges. Although the directions are different, their common "KPI" is whether the audience who spends time chasing dramas will feel that "watching is worth it" or even "CCTV is worth it." A highly recognized drama chasing report not only reflects the powerful motivation and original intention of CCTV to "live up to the times and the people", but also deeply implements Xi Jinping's cultural thoughts and practices ontology and epistemology with the practice theory and methodology of the new era.
(Author: Lv Fan, Director of the Audio and Video Office of Peking University Media Integration Center)
