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.