Mystery keep audience glued to television screen

Mystery keep audience glued to television screen

Joko E.H. Anwar, Contributor, Jakarta

Ghosts invade our TV screens, mostly on Thursday nights, with all
sharing the same fate of having died of unnatural causes and
condemned for their sins to laughing maniacally for evermore.

Forget about decent scripts or acting. This is the death of
quality TV. However, like most local television series, shows on
the supernatural continue to attract many viewers since local
audiences have always been interested in supernatural issues.

But the stories are not like those featured in The X-Files
series, which include UFOs, alien abduction and spontaneous
combustion. It is probably because there are so many unexplained
deaths in this country over such a long period of time that makes
our local audiences interested in stories about ghosts who seek
revenge from those who have wronged them.

In the 80s, local horror queen Suzanna was well known for her
role in the Sundel Bolong (translates roughly as an evil female
spirit with a hole in her back) film as a woman who turned into
ghost after being raped by several men and died after giving
birth.

There have also been countless local horror flicks which would
embarrass even the late Edward D. Wood Jr., who was dubbed the
Worst Director of All Time in the U.S.

Still, some of the locally made horror flicks continue to be
hot items on bad movies aficionados' list on the Internet.

Today, we have several TV shows in Indonesia dealing with
horror and things that go bump in the night.

Kismis or Kisah Misteri (Mystery Stories), which is screened
by RCTI television every Wednesday at 10 p.m., continues to
garner huge ratings.

When it was first aired late last year, AC Nielsen' survey
showed the show notched up a 5 in the TV rating. This week, the
its rating had risen to 9.

"We are optimistic that the show will continue to go strong
for a long time," the station's PR coordinator Murjadi Iksan
said.

The show recreates alleged real encounters with ghosts. One of
the show's episodes tells how some people were haunted by the
ghosts of people who died during the 1998 riots.

The half-hour show attracts both older viewers and children
who stay up late just to watch it.

More demanding audiences, however, will find it hard to
believe that such a show can attract wide audiences. The scripts
are moronic and the acting is so inept as to be laughable.

The show opens with a beautiful host narrating the background
to the upcoming story. The show even includes so-called local
celebrities telling about their encounters with ghosts.

Another show on the supernatural, TV Misteri on TPI
television, is even more mind-numbing.

The 90-minute show's latest episode told the story of a man
and a woman who committed suicide by drinking poison after the
man's mother disapproved of their relationship. The woman died
but the man, without further explanation, survived. For the next
60-minutes or so nothing happened except that the woman, who had
become a ghost, appeared two or three times.

Strangely, the show receives quite a high rating, between four
and five, every week.

Many TV stations try to attract viewers by putting their
mystery shows out on Thursday night, the night which is
considered sacred and scary at the same time by most locals.

TPI runs another mystery show right after TV Misteri, namely
Kesesatan (Lost Souls), a supernatural/action show written,
produced and directed by martial artist Taveri who also stars as
the show's hero named ... Taveri.

The show receives ratings of between three and four.

TRANS TV also runs two shows on the same night. The first one
is an hour-long horror drama, Misteri Leak (Balinese bloodsucking
female ghost). This show is slightly better than other similar
programs but still suffers from unintentionally laughable scripts
and acting. It also takes itself too seriously.

Misteri Leak is followed straight after by a half-an-hour
semi-reality show, Dunia Lain (Another World). This show is
actually the only watchable (although barely) supernatural show
on TV.

It features reputedly haunted places and dares participants to
overnight in them with cameras recording everything that happens.
It also screens interviews with experts about various strange
phenomenon.

On Thursday, the show also featured the mystery of jenglot,
palm-sized human-like figures which are said to be found in the
mountains. Even though the figures look dead, their hair and
nails continue to grow.

The show ended with disturbing testimony by an "expert" saying
that a DNA test on one of the figures showed that it had human
DNA.

Both Misteri Leak and Dunia Lain only hit the screens this
month and received ratings of, respectively, 1.2 with the average
number of viewers per episode being 358.000 and 1.6 with an
average viewership of 450.000. The low ratings are because they
have to compete with similar shows which are screened at the same
time.