TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Beautifully shot and meaningful, the historical TV drama “Black Tide Island” (星空下的黑潮島嶼) premiered in Taipei on Thursday and starts broadcasting at the end of the month.
The nine-part series is based on true stories and represents a new benchmark for quality TV from Taiwan. It covers a critical period in the nation’s history around the time of the Korean War (1950-53) when the competing ideologies of communism and democracy collided.
Set against the background of early KMT rule and suppression during the White Terror period (1947-1987), five young medics and intellectuals end up in prison on the remote Green Island.
The series opens dramatically with their voyage across the treacherous Taiwan Strait, which is influenced by the Kuroshio or “Black Current” — the inspiration for the series title. Later episodes deal with the difficulties of providing medical care in primitive conditions and look at the bonds of brotherhood formed through circumstance and desperation.
Speaking to Taiwan News on Saturday while traveling to Tainan for a screening, producer Roger Cheng (鄭凱駿) described the production and filming process as exhausting.
“There were a lot of challenges. One is we had to recreate the prison in Tainan, so it took a lot of time and effort to make it look similar to the prison in Green Island,” Cheng said. “We had underwater filming, fire, typhoons, the works.”
“There were also a lot of languages: Hakka, Taiwanese, Mandarin, and Japanese. This meant lots of intensive training for the actors over months,” Cheng said. “We even got in medical consultants to advise on what surgeries would have been like 70 years ago. A lot went into it.”
Cheng described the White Terror period as “a dark period of history in Taiwan” but emphasized that one of the main points of the series was to “highlight how people survived their hardships.” As the characters work together and manage impossible surgeries, Cheng said this illustrated “two very important universal elements”: survival and the critical role of medicine.
Speaking of his inspiration for producing the series, Cheng commented, “It is important for Taiwanese producers and directors to tell Taiwan stories in a fresh way.”
Helmed by veteran director and Golden Bell winner Jim Wang (王傳宗), the series opener was warmly received at the premiere. It has a big budget feel and looks to be an upgrade on traditional TV fare locally. There were also English subtitles.
“Black Tide Island” stars Wang Shih-hsien (王識賢), River Huang (黃河), Tsao Yu-ning (曹佑寧), Wu Nien-hsuan (吳念軒), and Hsia Teng-hung (夏騰宏).
It has received strong government support, particularly from the Hakka Affairs Council, and was produced by Hakka TV and Go Inside. It will be screened every Sunday at 9 p.m. from March 30 on Hakka TV, Chunghwa Telecom MOD, and HamiVideo. Also, from April 5, every Saturday at 10 p.m. on TTV.
See trailer here.
