Telenovelas, Soap Opera, Series, Serials Or Just Plain Drama

Compared to movies, I like dramas more. I grew up watching all kinds of dramas. Be it romance, doctor, police, crimes, lawyers, family, comedy, etc. 

When I was in primary school, well, my home didn't have the vcr, so what I watched was what the TV stations provided. There was three free TV stations back then, TV1, TV2 and TV3. I would watch the Hong Kong TVB dramas and sometimes, some Malay dramas. I still remember Opah. Hahaha, there wasn't much choices then. (My mother likes to watch Malay drama though, she said that compared to others, Malay drama is calmer, not so violent and more family oriented, she is getting sick of the Hong Kong dramas, people framing each other, siblings rivalry......)

Then, I remember I started to follow The X-Files and ER on TV2. The X-Files started my fascination with Sci-Fi dramas. Oh, another series that I love so much is Star Trek. Personally, I think Star Trek is much better than Star Wars, in terms of story lines. Then, there were many re-runs of old dramas, like The A-Teams, MacGyver, AirWolf, Knight Rider (hahaha, the talking car) and many more. When I was not studying, I would stare at the TV screen to watch all these dramas. Well, other than American dramas, Hong Kong dramas were huge during that time, other than that, Singaporean dramas were starting to show up on the free TV.

Oh, during primary school time, there's another free TV station, called Metro Vision (We called it TV4). However, after that, I think it gone bankrupt and bought over by another company.

Then, when I started secondary school, Korean dramas started to become really popular. I still remembered my friends stopped watching Hong Kong TVB drama and watched Korean drama instead. Well, on the same time slot, one TV station had TVB drama, another had Korean drama. So, many watched the Korean drama. Well, I think that was Autumn in My Heart or Winter Sonata. I watched one or two episodes, but I felt that Korean drama has too much tears, so I remained faithful with TVB dramas, but starting to watch Taiwanese, China and Japanese dramas. 

Then, all of a sudden, Spanish telenovelas were shown in local TV. I still remember three of them, La Usurpadora, Yo Soy Betty la Fea and Mis 3 Hermanas. I like Mis 3 Hermanas the most. It was shown on afternoon slot. All these long dramas were really 'long', so many episodes. I don't understand why I even watched Yo Soy Betty la Fea, the story was so so only, but I watched almost every single episodes of this telenovelas. For Mis 3 Hermanas, I like the opening song, A Puro Dolor and of course, the drama itself. I even tried to learn Spanish after watching these dramas, however, after some time, I gave up, lazy! But I took Japanese class after that. Other those three telenovelas, many were shown in Malaysia, there were Rosalinda, Juana la Virgen, Mi Gorda Bella, Maria Mercedes and more. From Juana la Virgen, I didn't really watch telenovela already, too time consuming and there are many good shows around. I diversified.

Other than these Spanish telenovelas, Taiwanese Hokkien dramas started to gain prominence too. These dramas total episodes are on par with the Spanish telenovelas, very long. I watched it occasionally and when I watched it, I started bugging my mom about the story lines. My mom will watch the dramas on every weekdays, there are so many on the TV, she can spend the whole afternoon just watching the Taiwanese Hokkien dramas. One of the special plots from the Hokkien Dramas is very often, a person long thought dead, suddenly spring to life. Sometimes, a character will die and alive again for a few times in the same drama, especially the villain. Hahaha!

Closer to home, dramas from Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines were shown too. One of the Thai dramas that I like is Love Lock (Roy Ruk Roy Adeed), a genre that I like about pass and present lives, this drama has a very nice theme song too, my ex-roommate chose this song to present in her Thai language class. Well, I only remembered one Indonesian drama, 'Bawang Putih, Bawang Merah (Garlic and Red Onion)'. The acting was so over the top, too much! For Philippines drama, have to mention Pangsako Sa 'Yo. It's a very long drama too, it was shown around the time when the Spanish telenovelas were very popular, it got people to start noticing Philippine dramas. I watch almost all genres of drama from many countries, the only one I couldn't stand to watch is the too realistic sad drama.

Lately, I am more into the American dramas, the story finished in one episode, or the most, two episodes. I don't have to watch all the episodes to know what's happening in the drama. But, sometimes, I would watch the serials too, recently, I just watched a Korean drama 'Moon embracing the sun', so good! Hahaha, I am more accepting to Korean dramas nowadays. I found out a website called Maaduu that provides legal streaming of Korean dramas with English subtitles. 

I think that the local Chinese drama is getting better too, I actually watched all the episodes of 'The Liar 说谎者'. I think for the local drama, plot and story line is better than years ago. 

From three TV stations 20 years ago, now Malaysia has 6 free TV stations and a few pay televisions. Well, until today, my family never feel the need to subscribe to any pay televisions. Hahaha, it's very difficult to find a home without Astro dish nowdays, but in my opinion, there's so many things to watch on the free TV, why bother to waste money to subscribe to pay TV. Even government owned TV2 has very decent and popular TV shows, for example, Dexter and Grimm. Well, if you don't like it because it's a government propaganda instrument, just don't watch the news.

There's an article from a columnist from The Star, however, I couldn't find it again. She mentioned that nowadays, most people have Astro subscription. Malay subscribe to Astro Ria, Chinese to Wah Lai Toi, Indian to Astro Vaanavil for something like that, so Malay knows more about Indonesia, Chinese on China or Taiwan and Indian on affairs of India. What we don't understand is other Malaysians. Well, I don't know how watching the same TV can create national integration, but she sounds so right. Actually, not only Astro, the free TV channels are quite race based too. Ahh!

Hahaha, almost out of topic. Over the years, I watched so many dramas. Not only it helps to pass time, I also learnt a thing or two from the dramas. I love dramas ♥!