From the stability of the royal road to unique lines…from now on, the emphasis is on scriptwriting! Winter Dramas You Should Start Watching Now!

Part 1 is here] These are the “winter dramas” that you should start watching now – the discussion will get you excited! A candidate for a new popular series!

Hana Sugisaki at a love hotel with a guy…

NTV is continuing to go its own way. Although it has not been able to achieve the same record as the previous season’s “Good Things, Bad Things,” which earned the highest number of views in Nippon TV’s history, it has introduced a memorable drama series, “Winter no Nanka, Spring no Nanka,” to the delight of TV watchers and TV people.

It is a very aggressive project written and directed by film director Rikiya Imaizumi. The quiet tale of love, subculture, and self-consciousness, told in a completely different style from conventional dramas, is a story that will appeal to a wide range of viewers,” said Oyama.

The film is impressive in that it is conveyed solely through the subtle changes in facial expressions of the lead actress, Hana Sugisaki (28), despite the fact that the explanatory dialogue has been stripped away. I would recommend this film to anyone who enjoys single-theater films.

A director of a production company said, “The scenes in which Sugisaki smokes cigarettes and goes to a love hotel with a man every week give breadth to recent dramas that are overly concerned with compliance.”

The first episode was strong with 2,264,000 views, but viewers dropped off by 40% in the second episode.

The expectations were high before the broadcast, but many viewers may not have been able to keep up with it. Many people are watching the show because they tell themselves, ‘I like this worldview,'” said Aida.

Fuji TV, which has revamped its management team and is aiming for revival, has placed drama at the center of its business. While the short drama distribution application (FOD Short) is performing well, the core of terrestrial drama productions is still Gekkan 9.

This season, Fuji Television is introducing “Yandoku! in which a former yankee becomes a skilled neurosurgeon to challenge the suffocating management system of a hospital.

The script is by Nemoto Nonji, who has written numerous hits including “Hakozume. He also wrote the morning drama “Omusubi” in which Kanna Hashimoto (27) served as the heroine, so the “revival of the duo” is probably to build a solid structure. What is interesting is that Mr. Nemoto is also in charge of Nippon TV’s “We Are Better at Losing Love than Pandas. This is a rare phenomenon, but I think it is due to the fact that both stations put a lot of emphasis on scripts.

Emphasis on Scripts: Pursuit of “Fun

Professional Insurance Investigator Ren Amane” (Fuji Network) ranked third in core viewer ratings after “Yandoku! Professional Insurance Investigator Ren Amane” (Fuji), which ranked third in terms of core viewer ratings after “Yandoku!”, is attractive for its lead actor Hiroshi Tamaki (46) and his supporting cast of Sae Okazaki (30),Atsuro Watabe (57) and Shinya Kote (52) with their comical characters.

In addition to the unique theme of an insurance investigator, watchers also appreciate the work of screenwriter Tetsuya Oishi, saying, “The storyline has a twist to it, and it is as stable and interesting as TV Asahi’s royal road dramas” (Oyama).

A producer at a key station says, “There is a trend that has become more pronounced in winter dramas.

The first episode of “Yandoku! was strong in both households & cores and was viewed 2,607,000 times in the first episode, but the ratings dropped significantly in the second episode and the number of views dropped below 2 million. Although TBS is excited about the “reboot” festival, “Musuko of the Future,” which is airing in the slot of the hit fall drama “Then, You Make It,” is lacking in both viewer ratings and viewer views. In fact, “Then -” was a drama made with a budget cut by nearly 100 million yen from previous productions. Viewers are beginning to be strictly selective about ″dramas to watch″, not by gorgeousness or frame. In the midst of “content overload” with terrestrial broadcasting, missed delivery, and online original productions, if a drama does not make viewers look forward to the next episode after the first broadcast (delivery), it will be eliminated regardless of whether it is a Gekkan 9 or an ambitious work by a film director.

TV Asahi has switched its strategy from standard dramas to one that emphasizes “hot topics” and “delivery. The number of script-oriented productions has increased, including the adoption of “writers’ rooms,” where multiple scriptwriters work as a team to develop a storyline. All of these efforts are in pursuit of “fun.

The “winter era” of drama productions in which the casting of leading roles was a fixed rule is over, and Japanese drama productions are regaining the form they should have had.

From the March 6, 2026 issue of FRIDAY