Koki Mitani & Masaki Suda’s drama is in big trouble! The difference is clear! Autumn Dramas to Watch This Season
A look at the secret stories behind the filming of these dramas!
TBS is in the top spot with the stable Sunday theater quality of “The Royal Family” and the popularity of “So, You Make It,” while TV Asahi is creating a buzz with its unique works and introducing sequels to popular series such as “Partners” and “Emergency Room,” which have a thick viewer base. These series are also showing results.
Nippon TV is shifting its focus to young viewers.
Dramas by NTV, the former ratings champion, are struggling in terms of viewer ratings, but a director at a production company analyzes that the company is “accelerating its focus on young people.
For example, the subtitle of “Good Things, Bad Things” is changed between terrestrial and broadcast, and on TVer it is made more compelling, such as “One person dies in the first minute of the drama. It is the easy-to-understand excitement and tricks that stick with the demographic that watches dramas via distribution. Nippon TV is well studied in so-called vertical short dramas ……, short dramas of one to three minutes in length that are designed to be viewed on smartphones.”
Broadcaster Aida Purin sees “Nippon TV’s focus on attracting people who like to think about it is also because young people are its target audience.
The quality of the official website and X is extremely high, as NTV has produced numerous hit drama series such as the “Occupation Series. There are hints hidden in the text of the character correlation chart and even in the pictures. The excitement on SNS is clearly higher than that of other stations.
Fuji Television is “bucking the trend,” as one insider fears.
Fuji Television has introduced “Absolute Zero: An Urgent Investigation of an Information Crime” in its flagship “Tsuki 9” slot. The fact that Yasuko Sawaguchi (60) was cast in the lead role, calling it a “new chapter,” is causing a stir.
The beauty is still there, but the Z generation has not seen Sawaguchi’s masterpiece “Forensic Woman,” so I can’t shake the feeling of “Why now? I can’t shake the feeling of “Why now? Thinking back, the April season of Tsuki 9 was also “Sequel to Sequel: My Second Love from the End. Why is Fuji trying to attract middle-aged and older viewers to a trendy drama series that has taken the world by storm?
When the previous series of “Absolute Zero” starring Kazuki Sawamura (58) was broadcast in 2006, questions were also raised from the field, but according to Mr. Kawada, “The staff revealed that it was an order from the top.
This time, too, it was probably a top-down decision to hang on to the hits of yesteryear. If Yuna Kuroshima (28), who plays the investigator, had been made the main character and Sawaguchi had been placed on the side, it might have still been possible to create a fresh atmosphere. ……”
The planning and filming of the fall drama began just as the Fuji TV issue was boiling over. A producer at a key station sympathized, saying, “The hardships on the frontlines were extraordinary.
The senior executives in charge of programming were being questioned across the board, and a third-party investigation was underway, so we had to proceed with the project. There were still power and sexual harassment supervisors in the drama team, and we were constrained to proceed with our work while there was a movement to accuse them of such harassment. The conservatism in this Tsuki 9 is probably symbolic of that.”
Attention Screenwriters.
Amidst the ″constraints,″ a hopeful star was “If this world were a stage, where would the dressing room be?
Written by Koki Mitani and starring Masaki Suda (32). The all-star cast, which included Fumi Nikaido (31), Ryunosuke Kamiki (32), Minami Hamabe (25), Eiko Koike (44), Hayato Ichihara (38), andAnn Mika (53), was highly anticipated, but the results were not encouraging.
The ratings have not been good, and when it comes to distribution, the first episode had 2.36 million views, but the third episode has only 900,000 views, with more than half of the viewers dropping out. Mr. Mitani also struggled with the movie “Let’s Talk about Suomi,” which was released last year. It was said that the reason was that the producer could not admonish him for his rambling story, but this time, too much was included and the story was scattered around. No one could say to Mr. Mitani, “This is not good,” or “Let’s do it this way. He probably wanted to make a comeback with this film, but Geki 9 has also lost its way. Fuji has been unable to find a way to win.
While Akiko Nogi and Koki Mitani have split the market, one of the features of this season is the emergence of new scriptwriters.
One of the features of this season’s scriptwriters is the emergence of new scriptwriters. The story of an unemployed single career woman who takes her child’s entrance exam as a fake mother for a former yankee female president is excellent. Through the process of taking the entrance examination, the story makes us think about the society that places a heavy burden on both working women and women with children, but the direction and script are not too heavy, making it easy for men to watch. The two young actors, Haru (34) and Rina Kawae (30), are also easy to watch,” said Oyama.
The original manga by Natsuko Taniguchi is also excellent, but the drama version has been well received for its “outstandingly interesting dialogue. The scriptwriter, Kei Ando, is a 32-year-old woman who runs a theater company and is a talented playwright who won the Kishida Kuniyoshi Drama Award. Oyama continues.
Her masterpiece is an absurd horror story about an office worker who fights against a door that has gone berserk, so it is unfathomable. It is also surprising that this is only his second terrestrial drama.
It seems likely that more scriptwriters trained in TV stations’ writers’ rooms, such as Sono Murazo and Matsumoto Yuki of “Bokutachi no ie” (Nippon TV), will be used in the future.
The scripts written by the big names are easy to read in terms of yield, but on the other hand, they often don’t get a chance to make a splash. There is a move afoot to actively promote newcomers and stage talents in an attempt to revitalize the scene. Naturally, it is only the younger generation that can capture the times. This is proof that dramas that reflect the times are becoming more sensitive to this.
TV Asahi’s change of course and Fuji’s straying from the path of the times were both born of pain, and it is with this background in mind that I would like viewers to enjoy the fall dramas.
From the November 28/December 5, 2025 issue of FRIDAY
PHOTO： Kumataro Arai
