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.