Japanese TV Dramas Are Using “Going Global” as an Escape—A Boring Show Is Still Boring Overseas

The other day, I was watching a YouTube video by a television critic who made an interesting observation.

A heavily promoted romance drama starring a top Japanese actress alongside a popular Korean actor had struggled in the ratings from its very first episode. It was the kind of show advertised extensively on hanging posters inside trains.

Apparently, a drama from another network, produced through a collaboration among Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and other countries, also failed to generate as much buzz as expected.

Both were created from the outset with global distribution firmly in mind.

The critic had something brutally straightforward to say about this.

“If Japan cannot make an entertaining drama on its own, it makes no sense to assume that working with the rest of the world will somehow produce one.”

That struck me as exactly right.

The Illusion That International Collaboration Automatically Makes a Show Better

I understand why the Japanese television industry is targeting overseas markets.

With Japan’s domestic market shrinking as the population ages and the birth rate declines, producers want to create shows they can sell around the world. From a business perspective, that is perfectly reasonable.

But expanding the market and making a show more entertaining are two different things.

Casting a popular Korean actor or partnering with overseas production companies cannot save a dull script.

In fact, trying too hard to accommodate audiences in every country may even produce something that offends no one but stays with no one either.

What About Anime and Video Games?

Japanese manga, anime, and video games offer a revealing contrast.

The manga industry has a huge pool of young people aspiring to become artists, fierce competition among publishers, and readers who judge the results without mercy.

Entertaining works emerge from that environment. After winning popularity at home, some of them ultimately find audiences around the world as well.

The same is true of video games. Developers may keep overseas markets in mind, but the main reason a game sells worldwide is, in the end, that the game itself is fun.

Global expansion is not what makes a work successful. An entertaining work sells globally because it is entertaining.

Perhaps the industry has this order backward.

When Global Expansion Fails, Fall Back on Past Hits

Another trend that concerns me is the revival of popular works from the past.

Take Bayside Shakedown, for example. I was once an avid viewer myself. The idea of portraying police bureaucracy within a detective drama felt fresh, and the characters were compelling.

But nearly 30 years have passed since then.

The young actors of that era have grown much older, and Yuji Oda, who played the lead, is now approaching 60. Detective Aoshima, once the show’s young hero, is nearing the age when retirement would be on his mind.

Who exactly is going to watch a revival of that show now?

Longtime fans may tune in for the nostalgia. But can it attract a new generation of viewers?

Bayside Shakedown became a hit because it was a new kind of drama unlike anything that had come before it.

If the industry wants to recreate that success, it should make something new for the present day instead of reviving an old title.

Back then, Detective Aoshima fought against the outdated culture of his organization. How ironic that, 30 years later, the people making the drama cannot break free from their own past success.

Do Entertaining Shows Come From Conference Rooms?

Conduct market research, assemble popular actors from overseas, and develop a project around global distribution. Or pull an old hit out of storage.

Both approaches are easy to explain in a planning meeting. If you line up names with proven track records, you also have a ready-made excuse when the project fails.

But what the industry really needs may be to discover new talent and cultivate an environment that produces entertaining work.

That takes time, and failure is unavoidable. Perhaps that is precisely why the industry gravitates toward easy concepts.

Bayside Shakedown once gave us the famous line, “The incident isn’t happening in the conference room.”

It seems that today’s television industry is trying to decide even what makes a drama entertaining inside the conference room.