F4 MAY Be Breaking Up Posted: March 25, 2004     Beautiful Dreamers Boyband F4 is (almost) dead. Long live Meteor Garden. Three years after the Taiwanese idol drama phenomenon hit our shores, idol drama series are still going strong. What explains their continued success and what can local drama makers learn from their popularity? By Ho Ai Li F4 MAY be breaking up, but the passion for idol-drama serials which the Taiwan boyband helped to pioneer remains hot. LACKLUSTRE: Local series Fantasy with Michelle Saram and Chen Hanwei failed to take off. In 2001, their trailblazing Meteor Garden revitalised Taiwanese TV drama serials and made the quartet - Jerry Yen, Vic Chou, Vanness Wu and Ken Chu - household names from China to the Philippines. Naysayers at first said Meteor Garden, which spawned a successful sequel in 2002, was merely a passing fad. But three years later, idol dramas, which are targetted at viewers in their teens to the 20s, are still going strong. Mr Paul Chan, SPH MediaWorks' senior vice-president (programming, branding and promotions), links their hit formula to 'beautiful faces, beautiful shooting locations, catchy soundtracks and fairy-tale plots'. 'Youth at this stage in life are making dreams. Never mind if such 'dreams' are practical or not, they're part of growing up. Idol dramas are really about dreams,' he says. The genre has gone on to spawn copycats in China like Beach (2003), starring top Chinese actors Li Yapeng and Zhou Xun. It has also spun off Taiwanese-Korean collaborations like Scent Of Love (2003), and Taiwanese-Singapore efforts like Westside Story (2003), now airing on Channel U. Whereas the early efforts were a sugary confection of youthful dreams and fantasies, the latest hit idol drama in Taiwan mixes in social realism, exploring teen gangs with young and swoonsome leads. Called The Outsiders or Tou-yu, the series, which is sold as VCD sets here, stars newcomer Guo Pin-chao and Lu Ming-chun. =============================================== Source: The StraitsTimes Asia http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/life/stor...,241920,00.html