On March 14, a seminar on the TV series "180 Days Restart Plan" hosted by the China Television Art Committee was held in Beijing.
The 180-Day Restart Plan Seminar
"180 Days Restart Plan" is a realistic TV series with a light comedy style. It tells the story of a new realistic family through the life of mother Wu Limei and daughter Gu Yunsu. The drama also touches on issues that people are generally concerned about today, such as workplace competition, family relationships, and mental health. The dilemmas and choices made by the characters in the drama also resonate with the audience.
Diverse Writing of Female Narratives
Liu Wei, director of the TV Drama Department of the Hunan Provincial Radio and Television Bureau, introduced several key focus areas of the drama. The first was that "the drama innovatively presents the mother-daughter narrative and reshapes the proposition of love." The TV series "180 Days Restart Plan" breaks away from the traditional narrative of older single women being urged to get married. It uses the 180-day cohabitation experiment as a clue to tell the story of an inverted family relationship in which an unemployed daughter accompanies her pregnant mother during childbirth. Relying on innovative character settings and subversion of the mother-daughter relationship, the narrative focuses on the deep relationship and dynamic communication between the two female characters.
Stills from "180 Days Restart Plan"
Secondly, from "her dilemma" to "her power", the female narrative is written in a diversified way. "The series does not use stereotypical narrative routines such as the counterattack of independent women and the friendship between close friends, but focuses on the survival game of three generations of women in the dual context of family and society. Through the interaction of three generations of women, it not only shows the intergenerational inheritance of women's experience, but also reveals the differentiated dilemmas faced by different age groups." Liu Wei said.
Liu Wei said that the drama also uses the family as a slice of civilization, opening up a new path for exploring social issues: "The 180-Day Restart Plan uses the micro-incision of a reconstituted family to build a multi-prism to observe contemporary social issues. The drama shows broader issues such as occupational gender bias, fertility discrimination, domestic violence, rights negotiation in reconstituted families, and intergenerational communication. However, the drama does not deliberately present emotional rifts throughout the show, but instead conveys layers of warmth through delicate depictions."
Lv Weigang, member of the Party Leadership Group and Deputy Director of the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Culture, Radio, Film and Tourism, introduced from the perspective of cultural and tourism integration that in order to allow the audience to immerse themselves in the characters more, "we have carried out in-depth activities of 'Follow the TV series to travel Zhejiang' to give play to the long-tail effect of TV series. During the broadcast of the drama, the same scenery and unique humanities in the drama also attracted widespread attention, allowing the audience to see Hangzhou, a city with a profound historical heritage and charming natural scenery through the drama. After the broadcast, we also jointly launched the promotion activities of 'Don't be a working NPC' and 'Follow Gu Yunsu to restart the spring Hangzhou DMA', selecting ten shooting locations in the drama and two paths to restart life, calling on the people of Hangzhou to follow the footsteps of the heroine Gu Yunsu to check in the streets and lanes of Hangzhou and restart their own spring script."
Finding a simple solution to family issues
As the family chapter of the "Emotional Trilogy" by Mango TV's contracted director Li Mo, "180 Days Restart Plan" continues the consistent emotional delicacy and humanistic care in his works. The creative team presents the audience with a series of light and heavy family pictures.
Director Li Mo
At the meeting, Li Mo, the director of "180 Days Restart Plan", believed that TV drama creation should be an expression of concern for the public and should focus on the lives of a wider range of people. Therefore, the original intention of creating the drama was to talk about "how to rebuild family relationships with parents" through this drama, and how to express the care and love that are difficult to express in family relationships to each other in some way. If such a drama can make everyone aware of the things that are ignored and abandoned in daily life, it is the greatest significance of the creator's hard work.
Actor Liu Chang
Liu Chang, who plays Xu Wenbin in the play, said that there is a symbiotic relationship between the actor and the role. The role injects the actor's own life experience while helping the actor grow. Xu Wenbin in the play has grown up because of this mother and daughter. Outside the play, we also went from being strangers to becoming family and friends who care for each other because of a play. This is a wonderful experience for creators. We should cherish the beautiful creative environment we have now, treat our work with heart, and convey truth, kindness and beauty.
Actor Wu Yue
Wu Yue, who plays Wu Limei in the play, shared that "180 Days Restart Plan" is like a love letter to her mother. Wu Limei in the play is a sunny, willful, unswerving middle-aged woman with a sense of youth and innocence. Under the sunshine, she is like a plant growing towards the sun. At the same time, she also has her own affection and poetry. Fortunately, during the more than three months of filming, I met a super serious, responsible and cooperative creative team. On this road of art, no matter it is sunny or rainy, or windy and snowy, as long as you love and don't slack off, as long as you place persistence and compromise, sincerity can always be exchanged for sincerity, and deep feelings can always be exchanged for frankness.
Using mirror stories to trigger intergenerational resonance
Through the narrative design of "mother and daughter mirroring each other", "180 Days Restart Plan" unfolds the complex and awkward emotional folds in Chinese family affection. Through the "mother-daughter life restart experiment" of dislocation, collision and reconstruction, it transforms intergenerational conflicts into an opportunity for understanding and symbiosis, allowing the audience to reflect on the profound connotations of family, family affection and self-growth in resonance. At the same time, the series also uses "imperfect" real images to shape and dissolve screen stereotypes, opening up a more life-like expression space for the creation of family dramas.
Li Jingsheng, vice president of the China Radio and Television Association, believes that the biggest feature of "180 Days Restart Plan" is that it shows very unique, extreme and distinctive artistic characteristics in the expression of conventional themes and conventional values, which makes conventional themes shine with new ideas. The main creators use a particularly comedic, humorous and witty way to show the texture of reality and the taste of life that is worth savoring.
Xu Jian, director of the news department of the Literary Gazette, said that the 180-Day Restart Plan takes an unusual mother-daughter relationship as the main line, extending a complex, healing and warm story with strong dramatic tension. A series of topics such as generational differences, women's consciousness, and workplace situations give the play more background of life and the times. The restart of the mother-daughter relationship and family relationship also shows the restart of women's social roles and self-cognition.
Niu Mengdi, editor-in-chief of the literature and art department of Guangming Daily, believes that 180 Days Restart Plan uses a broader creative vision to show the growth and consciousness of women. The dual-time and space narrative expression opens up a dialogue between women across generations and reveals the common problems of women's growth. At the same time, the multi-faceted male image in the play tears off the warm veil of traditional family dramas, and opens up a space for audiences to think in the balance between absurdity and warm comedy.
Stills from "180 Days Restart Plan"
He Tianping, deputy director and associate professor of the Audiovisual Communication Department of the School of Journalism at Renmin University of China, believes that the work, with a light-hearted and humorous tone, meticulously reproduces the friction and collision between the mother and daughter in their daily family life, from which they continue to deepen their understanding and support each other, and finally achieve a warm journey of growing together. Behind the family story of this "atypical" mother and daughter, a new spiritual dialogue field belonging to two generations of women is deeply constructed, which not only transcends the narrative conventions of traditional family dramas, but also provides the audience with a vivid perspective to examine the issue of intergenerational differences.
Zhong Chengxiang, a member of the Central Academy of Literature and History and a literary critic, said that "180 Days Restart Plan" is more about the exploration of human nature, the exploration of the relationship between the sexes, and especially the exploration of women's independent consciousness and self-worth realization. The director consciously aestheticized life to a considerable extent, which was successful in artistic expression and summarized the experience and provided ideas for TV drama creation.
Zhu Zhengwen, deputy director of the TV Drama Department of the State Administration of Radio and Television, said that from the perspective of inheritance and the future, we especially hope to see new ideas, new perspectives, and new aesthetic expressions from the younger generation of creators. Works like "180 Days Restart Plan", "I'm Fine in My Hometown", and "Pretend Revelation" are unique among the younger generation of creators, and they have achieved stable output in terms of quality, showing the talent of the creative team, and also giving people higher expectations for their future creations.
