Dr Chen's Diary

I chanced upon this local produced television programme few days ago and have been following it since. It's now only at its fourth episode and I do not know how many episodes are there left. So far, what do I think? Well, it's a bit retarded. But in a comical and flavourful way. Obviously, without much mentioning, Malaysia's local programme has lots of room for improvement, but at least in this television programme we see something authentically Malaysian.

For a long time, we finally have a drama series that features actors speaking in a true Malaysian accent, despite how inaccurate or unpleasant they are to our ears. They don't pretend to speak in pure Mandarin like how the Singaporeans tend to do, and while it reflects our substandard Mandarin in the world, it reflects a very real Malaysian situation. We Malaysians speak that way, just accept it and forget that we don't speak as great and pure as the Taiwanese or Chinese. Trying to speak like them, like how the Singaporean dramas are scripted, is just a little pathetic and make the entire show unnatural and unrealistic.

The acting is a bit poor and the story, like I said, is retarded. It has a lot of illogical and unrealistic scenes and some which appear to be comic/anime-like, but other than that the story is itself quite entertaining. So far, it has accurately portrayed an actual Malaysian life. I know it's unusual in our local entertainment industry to do such a thing, but I like it and I don't think it's bad. It's just an embracing of our local demography and society.

So far so good, will keep watching until the end or I cannot afford to continue watching. (Working life is picking up pace sigh...)