Friday, January 13, 2017

[Opinion] J-Drama -- Ten Women in Darkness (2016)


Ten Women in Darkness (2016)

1. Of the Asian TV dramas that I have watched recently, I quite enjoy the Japanese drama Ten Women in Darkness ("黒い十人の女") ("Kuroi 10 nin no Onna") (2016).

This 10 episodes drama was first aired weekly in Japan from September 29, 2016 to December 2, 2016.

The drama is based on a script that was made into a movie in 1961, a one episode TV drama in 2002, and a theater production in 2011.

This rather light-hearted TV drama is about how the wife and nine lovers of a middle-aged TV producer together plotted to murder him in order to escape the relationship trap they were in.

By a happy coincidence, the actor that played the middle-aged TV producer (船越 英一郎) is the son of the actor that played the same character in the 1961 movie (船越英二).


2. In recent years, among Asian TV dramas, I have enjoyed watching Japanese TV dramas the most.

This is because of the quality of their scripts.

I did not have any expectations about how good or bad it was going to be when I chanced upon Ten Women in Darkness (2016), but then I was attracted by its story line.

At first, I thought it was just another melodrama about love and men / women relationships.

But I was taken by surprise by each new episodes as the wife and the nine lovers were introduced.

The wife and the nine lovers each has very distinct personalities that came through the acting.

I was totally taken by surprise as the wife and nine lovers developed into a victim's club and together they plotted to murder the husband.

There was a twist to the ending that maintain the light and comedic tone of the drama that I will not give away.

But as one of my brothers has observed about Japanese TV dramas, they almost always have a life lesson to them.

The morality of the life lesson in Japanese TV dramas makes them very attractive in a morally relativistic world.


Reference:

"黒い十人の女", Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia,
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%BB%92%E3%81%84%E5%8D%81%E4%BA%BA%E3%81%AE%E5%A5%B3
(accessed 2017-01-13).

End.