Style comes first in local TV series

Style comes first in local TV series

Television series have become favorite viewing matter after
the local film industry petered out in the late 1980s. They win
high ratings, but critics pan the shows and their stars. The
Jakarta Post's contributors Tuti Gintini and Agni Amorita,
along with T. Sima Gunawan and Ida Indawati Khouw,
look at the face of TV series today.

JAKARTA (JP): Love is the favorite dish on the menu of local
TV series, spiced with heaping doses of adultery, intrigue and
struggles over inheritance.

The storylines tug at the heartstrings of viewers, spreading
sorrow and tears in all directions.

Characters are either black or white, and the plot drags on
with new and increasingly bizarre twists. Conflicts are resolved
in ways that are not only alien to Indonesians but also at the
expense of logic and sensibility.

The lead members of the cast, male and female, are uniform in
their prettiness. All always appear at their fashionable best in
little suburban palaces.

Raam Punjabi's Multi Vision Plus pioneered the production of
TV series of this type after the demise of the Indonesian film
industry. Other production houses followed and today TV series --
locally known as sinetron -- dominate the airwaves, inviting
boredom among some viewers as well as TV crews.

"I am fed up with playing the role of a father fraught with
problems or an adulterous husband. I dream of seeing scripts with
a new theme which will be a challenge to my acting ability," said
Cok Simbara.

In Noktah Merah Perkawinan (Red Stain on a Marriage), a PT
Rapi Film production, Cok played the role of a harried husband
and father, with Ayu Azhari as the costar.

He has paid the price of the series' success by being typecast
in similar roles.

Scriptwriters such as Firman Triyadi and Tri Sasongko said the
TV series industry had yet to create a conducive climate for the
emergence of quality film scripts.

They said they were trapped in the existing structure.
"Honestly, I don't think I have done my best as a scriptwriter,"
Tri Sasongko said.

Scripts are often hurriedly written to meet the criterion of
50 pages per episode.

Actress Bella Saphira, who stars in Dewi Fortuna, said there
was no time to rest during a production.

"How can I be free from stress as the shooting schedule must
be completed as fast as possible in order to be able to meet the
broadcast schedule. For example, the shooting of an episode must
be completed on Tuesday, notwithstanding the availability of
time, because it must be aired on Thursday."

TV series presenting action, mysteries, horror and black magic
tales have also attracted viewers.

SCTV has for the last few months aired old films starring one-
time horror genre queen Suzanna. Indosiar is overjoyed by the
success of Misteri Gunung Merapi (Mystery of Mt. Merapi), which
ranks first in ad revenue.

Some production houses are striving to go against the current
of mediocrity.

Prima Enterprise production house, for example, has completed
the production of dozens of TV shows with intelligent scripts,
and some were developed from prize-winning short stories. To make
sure their 90-minute productions are different from the run-of-
the-mill TV series, they call them F-TV, for TV films. SCTV will
air them every Tuesday night; ANTeve also recently presented
quality TV movies called telecinema.

"It is expected that these films will be a sight for sore eyes
for Indonesian film devotees and become alternative programs on
TV," said Leo Susanto of Prima Enterprise.

He added he was thinking of adapting such world famous
productions as Caligula, Julius Caesar, Othello and
Hamlet and offering them for international sale.

Loyal fans claim Leo's films are a cut above the rest.

"I like them because the stories are interesting and they are
not too long. Some TV series last very long and the story becomes
too drawn out and boring," said Eni, a receptionist at a private
company.

New strategy

Many people are warning Raam Punjabi to devise a new strategy
for his productions to keep up with the times.

After all, Raam led the way in their development in 1993.
Success inevitably spawned many copycats, who are now branching
out into new themes.

Some observers say Multi Vision is too stuck in its ways. They
assert the stories in Multi Vision's productions are influenced
by the great epics of Ramayana and Bharatayuda, with all the main
characters kings and princes. Characters from the lower classes
are merely supporting figures.

Raam argued the use of characters and settings representing a
high-class society and attractive faces referred to a particular
TV station segmentation. Glamor and beauty, he said, were ploys
to attract viewers.

The problem of films lacking in originality is not new. Des
Alwi, a maker of documentaries, once stated that 80 percent of
Indonesian films were imitations of other works. Much earlier,
film critic Salim Said, in a book on Indonesian films, said they
were usually narratively illogical because the stories were a
concoction of tales from imported films.

At its inception, Indosiar was roundly accused of adopting the
concept of Hong Kong's TV-B. The logograms of the two television
stations share not only a common letter type but also colors.
Several of Indosiar's early productions, such as the TV series
Tahta (The Throne), starring Mathias Muchus, was strongly
derivative of Mandarin TV drama.

Multi Vision has produced at least one acclaimed TV series,
Bukan Perempuan Biasa (No Ordinary Woman), starring luminous
actress Christine Hakim and Desy Ratnasari. Although the
production showed women in stereotyped domestic roles, it won
raves among critics when it was aired on RCTI.

Other fine TV series, telling of the everyday problems of
ordinary people, are Keluarga Cemara (The Cemara Family) on RCTI,
and the immensely popular Si Doel Anak Sekolahan (Doel The
Graduate), which broadcast its last episode on Indosiar last
month.

Blame

Marselli Sumarno, a filmmaker and lecturer at the School of
Film and Television of the Jakarta Institute of the Arts, said
the actors alone could not be blamed for the low-quality film
production.

"It also depends on the scriptwriter, director and producer,"
he said.

Christine was a teenage model when she became involved in
movies, "but she developed well under the direction of Teguh
Karya, who gave her roles to play in selective films with good
storylines"

He observed that most sinetron actors did not do their best
because there was no challenge in the filmmaking.

"They play the same role all the time. For example, as a
mother, they should do this, if they have to cry, they will cry
like this, and if they are angry they act like that ... "

He noted Indonesian society was like a pyramid, with poorly
educated, low-income people making up the majority of the
structure. They are usually not critical and enjoy watching the
dream lives of wealth and ease shown in the TV series.

The TV industry is capitalizing on the situation by churning
out more lightweight shows.

"We have some idealistic producers, but their number is very
small compared to the capitalist ones," Marselli said.

He added that state TV network TVRI, which is gearing up for
transformation, could provide a counterbalance by becoming a
public TV system.