With a background in Taiwanese public television and now president of leading production company Greener Grass Culture, Phil Tang has been one of the key players in Taiwan’s evolving drama production space.
Founded by Hank Tseng in 2008, Greener Grass is both a film and TV producer, with film credits including horror movie The Tag-Along, and series including period drama Gold Leaf and crime dramas The Victims’ Game and Copycat Killer. The latter two shows were produced for Netflix and Greener Grass is currently working on the second season of The Victims’ Game, about a forensic scientist with Asperger’s syndrome.
Separately, Tang continues to lend his drama production expertise to other Taiwanese companies and was also a producer on Damou Entertainment’s ground-breaking show The World Between Us, which delved into a range of social issues and won several prizes at Taiwan’s Golden Bell Awards.
Tang is now in post-production on two series – The Outlaw Doctor, through Greener Grass, and Three Tears In Borneo, with Public Television System (PTS) – that represent a new direction for Chinese-language dramas by bringing in elements designed to increase international appeal.
Phil Tang
“In many territories, streamers have different strategies for local and international production, with higher budgets for international shows,” Tang explains. “On the international side, we’ve started to bring in more cross border elements, for example in the storylines and cast.”
Backed by Chunghwa Telecom and PTS, The Outlaw Doctor stars Vietnamese actor Lien Binh Phat and Taiwan’s Janine Chang in the story of an immigrant in Taiwan who is working illegally as a doctor to cover his mother’s medical expenses. While the series will be broadcast on Chunghwa’s IPTV platform and streamer Hami Video in Taiwan, Greener Grass is in talks to sell international rights.
“Around half the dialogue is in English as the cast includes other non-Taiwanese characters, so it’s natural for them to communicate in English,” Tang explains. “This is something unique for Taiwanese audiences, but we think the international audience will find it interesting as well.”
Three Tears In Borneo is the story of a group of Taiwanese teenagers who are tasked with guarding Japanese prisoners-of-war in a camp in Borneo, Malaysia during the Second World War. Partly filmed in Borneo, the series features Japanese cast and dialogue in English, Japanese and Chinese. It will be broadcast by PTS in March 2024.
Tang says this kind of innovation is necessary as Taiwan’s TV and streaming industry moves into a new phase. Around five years ago, Taiwan’s drama production started to transform, due to investment from global streamers, with an increase in budgets and a wider range of genres and topics, including social issues, politics and crime. “When Netflix entered the market, I decided to stop working for local broadcasters and move into production because I could see a different business model was coming,” says Tang.
Prior to that, Taiwan was known across Asia for its romantic dramas, featuring youth-oriented stories and pretty young actors and actresses, but with the emergence of mainland China’s TV industry, Taiwan’s “idol” dramas started to lose their regional appeal.
When the global streamers entered Taiwan in 2016, local producers became more ambitious and along came hard-hitting shows including The World Between Us, The Victims’ Game, Copycat Killer, Taiwan Crime Stories and Wave Makers that started winning awards and reaching an audience beyond Taiwan’s borders.
Unlike mainland Chinese dramas, these shows had no censorship restrictions when it came to tackling subjects such as LGBTQ+ and gender issues, political corruption and moral ambiguity in crime.
Three Tears In Borneo
“I started my career as a daily news journalist, so I’m personally interested in stories that explore social issues, such as mental health and marginalized groups in society,” says Tang. “Although The Victims’ Game is a crime drama, it also looked at issues such as suicide.”
But Tang explains that the initial boom in Taiwanese drama has slowed significantly over the past year as the streamers have pulled back on content investment, not just in Taiwan, but internationally. While Netflix is still producing in Taiwan, Chinese-language content has not been a priority for the global streamer; Warner Bros Discovery slowed down while it restructured (although it announced a show with Damou this week), and Disney recently shut down its Taiwan production office.
“We face a budget issue because local Taiwanese streamers and broadcasters can’t purchase series at a high price, so we’ve only had two routes for premium drama – either get funding from PTS or work with a global platform,” explains Tang. “But now the number of global streaming platforms you can sell to is contracting.”
Taiwan’s government, recognizing that the drama boom was in danger of going bust, has recently stepped in with support programmes. It has earmarked a portion of the recently approved ‘One Plus Four – T-Content Plan’, which has pledged $311M (NT$10BN) to support the creative industries, to provide subsidies for Taiwanese dramas aiming for international markets.
“As a result, Taiwan now has many writers and directors working on quality shows, but the model is changing,” explains Tang. “Instead of selling to one international buyer, we’re going back to the traditional model of selling to lots of different international streamers and broadcasters around the world.”
Tang points to Gold Leaf, an adaptation of Huang Kuo-hua’s novel set against the backdrop of Taiwan’s tea industry in the 1950s, as an example of this – the show was acquired by multiple platforms in Korea and Japan.
International co-production is also part of the Taiwanese government’s strategy – during the ongoing Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF), Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) signed cooperation agreements with France’s CNC and Series Mania and Korean studio CJ ENM. “With government help, Taiwan can act as a hub to attract different countries to produce content that we can then take to the world,” says Tang.
Like several other production industries in East Asia, Taiwan is also looking to the booming Korean drama industry as a model, explains Tang. “Korea has been investing in their TV drama industry for many years and now they’re seeing the fruits of that investment as K-drama is popular all over the world.”
But he adds that it’s not just about finding good stories and increasing production budgets – it’s also important to promote that content and the talent behind it, again taking lessons from K-drama, which initially started to travel due to the popularity of Korean stars.
“Taiwan used to have stars that were popular all over Asia, but now everyone is talking about Korean and Japanese stars and our talent is not as well known,” says Tang.
“Taiwanese boy band F4 is still popular in Japan and Southeast Asia, but it’s time we had another wave. One of our aims is to develop new talent, as well as work with established actors and actresses, and then promote them internationally. We have a lot of talent that can speak English and is popular in Chinese-speaking markets, so it’s time for the global market to take a look.”
