Chinese television drama

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Chinese television drama (Simplified Chinese: 电视连续剧) are similar to television drama in North America, but are often longer in length, and portray a story too lengthy to be made into a movie.

A large number of series end all episodes in cliffhangers. CCTV-8 is a channel that airs TV series around the clock. Series are divided into several rough categories, historical (subdivided into historical fiction, nationalist-rallying, and historical re-enactment), police and politics, comedy, and a more modern family conflicts drama. The beginning of each episode is by prologued an opening theme music with credits, at the end there probably are some ending theme music, with more credits than the opening music.

Long-form Chinese television series vary in quality, although in recent years observers have noted a sharp increase in production values and script quality in some series. Also, a number of Chinese television series used music from Hollywood movies as incidental music.