Chinese television drama

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, historical re-enactment and wuxia), 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's some ending theme music, with more credits than the opening music.

The series of episodes run on together to depict a series of events that happen one after another in relevance to the main plot of the drama. Like a novel, the drama contains characters, conflict, plot, climax, and resolution that intrigue the audience’s interest. The large number of episodes allow the plot to be carried in much more details than in a short movie. A particular aspect of life such as high school, college, work life of a person, or a specific job is shown with much greater details that allow the audience to acknowledge that particular area in detail. This gives the audience a better understanding of the characters and their perspectives as well as the entirety of the storyline as a whole.

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.

Dramas are generated with a specific genre like romance, comedy, horror, family drama, sports, or a mixture of these in the form of ancient, historical, or modern to highlight the theme and suits the audience’s interest. Chinese dramas are often classified by where they were produced like mainland dramas, Taiwanese dramas, and Hong Kong dramas. Each differs in the style of filming and editing format. Most consist of romance, family and friends with the combination of pop cultural themes.

See also