Forthcoming Teleseryes in Kazakhstan: Good Stories & Forgettable Stars

There are talks in Kazakhstan social media these 4 teleseryes might be released there (two are being shown, Forevermore & Dream Dad) . If true, that's just a confirmation  the first one, Forevermore, really made a big splash. The biggest fan club of the series  had twice bigger membership in two months than the entire run of the South Korean Boys Over Flowers (I'll detail the comparison in a separate forthcoming article). I am sure the plots of the other teleseryes will interest the ordinary Kazakh housewives. There's a hitch: you can feel, the great impact of  Enrique Gil & Liza Soberano  is not being generated with Dream Dad. You can virtually feel the thermometer dipping. I'm pretty sure, from Two Wives to Bagito, the hotness factor will have to do more dipping. By the time Bagito, with its ordinary-looking stars, is shown, I actually fear the goodwill earned by Enrique Gil will have been dissipated, or worse, forgotten. What comes to mind is Be Careful With My Heart, where the the teleserye was actually well-received everywhere but you hardly read a wimp about the forgettable stars.

 Good story with forgettable stars, a "just enough" formula to get by?

 Let's not forget the South Korean experience. The problem of South Korea is they don't have a deep bench of beautiful people to convert as stars. Every country has its share of beautiful people, it only varies on the number, and it was okay for South Korea in the beginning when it produced relatively fewer film features, but as its film industry grew to $1.9 billion recently, they had to produce more & as a result, needed more stars, but the lack of adequate candidates was very obvious. The quality of its stars suffered as a result. There was simply too few really beautiful people to go around, and plastic surgery can only do so much, in fact, it had negative impact as people balked at being enchanted by obviously fake beauties with fake jaws, etc. This is one of the reasons of the cooling of interest outside the Mongoloid zone of Northeast Asia, which proves looks of the stars are still important. That is also one of the factors why the Philippines was able to establish its niche in many areas (of course, aside from the fact,  we have competitive story-telling too, considering we have been producing films longer than anybody in our neighborhood). And though the Pinoy artists are openly admired as better-looking than the other Asian stars, the quality of the local stars is slipping. Probably a new  Pinoy producer, proud that a million out of the 100 million Filipinos (PHP150 million gross)  are watching his films, would contentedly decide he's a success, and since the "good stories, forgettable surgical looks" formula of South Korea is still somewhat working in non-discriminating markets, why not copy it and do "good stories, cross-eyed stars" instead, anyway it is very Pinoy to be "puwede naman e". He forgot we have a deep bench of beautiful people and we can afford to use only beautiful ones all the way and we still have many extras waiting, and in the process, using beauty as extra come-on to make our brand hotter. And probably entice ten million more Filipinos to watch? And produce more stars abroad that stand out like Kristine Hermosa & Marian Rivera, the only two actresses who stood out abroad in our two decades of teleserye-making?

 The Kazakhstan adventures of our Pinoy teleseryes will be interesting to monitor. I am keeping pulse on the social media responses considering Kazakhstan has no formal rating system.

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