Over the holidays and the past few months, most Singaporeans have been hooked and captivated by the “highest-rated TV show in Singapore’s history”, as Mediacorp put it. It is the show that has not only caused much buzz on the Internet but friends to cancel on dates just to catch up with the show! It is of course, The Little Nyonya.

Singapore’s HIGHEST ever rated primetime drama series…

Many people have been enchanted by the seemingly accurate presentation of the Peranakan culture, with food that tantalizes the taste buds and clothing which are traditional yet stylish. Others have been more intrigued by the interesting characters that provided hours of opinions exchanged at water coolers in offices.

This writer, however, is not such a fan. I have been decidedly non-pulsed and unmoved by the show, which to me lacks in creativity, originality and logic. I’ll proceed to give my reasons why this show can only be considered an accidental success.

1) In my opinion, there are 3 types of people who tuned in to the show. The first is the Peranakan, of course, intrigued by a show depicting his/her culture in a Chinese medium. The Peranakan therefore tunes in, half out of curiosity and half out of fears that their culture may have been unfavourably caricatured. The second type is the genuine fan of local broadcasting, in which case, they turn in to every show and get needlessly enraptured with them. This is also the type which helped the diabolical disaster that was The Peak (最高点) draw consistently high ratings. Remember the show which Singapore’s maritime industry was the background for? Me neither. The third type, is the armchair critic of local broadcasting, like c’est moi, who watch shows to see how illogical and uncreative the plots turn out to be. Like yours truly, these people try to predict what they think the ending will be, based on the first 5 episodes. The sad thing is that these people are actually right 80% of the time. It’s also my conjecture that these people, who have nothing better to do, watch for the sake of watching, thus causing a spike in ratings, like me.

2) The characters in this show, to me, are one-dimensional and sorely lacking. Jeanette Aw cried in almost every scene to underline the suffering that her dual characters endured. Huang Meijiao’s antagonistic biased matriarch role has been too widely overstepped and is no longer fresh. Qi Yuwu’s humble and unassuming Chen Xi is well, unassuming. I daresay he’s our Keanu Reeves. In fact, I only liked two characters, one being San Yow’s affable butcher Liu Yi Dao, who in my opinion stole the show every time he was in a scene. The other character to make an impression on me was the “Spawn of Satan” character, the villainous Robert Zhang. The character to me was vile, evil, and despicable. He played the role of the traditional villain to a T. His villain was at the very root of his bereft soul, a hopeless coward. There’s nothing anyone loves to hate more than a cowardly vile villain, no matter how ironic that sounds.

3) Another major grievance I have about the characters is the lack of originality for the inspiration for the characters. The most notable one that springs to mind is Joanne Peh’s Yuzhu, who turns from shy humble virgin to a raging madwoman due in part of being raped by Robert Zhang. Now, pardon my obvious pointing out, but the scene where she smiles creepily and eats worms, is such a total rip-off of the late great Heath Ledger’s Joker, so much so you’re almost expecting her to go, “Why so serious?”

4) The uproar over the much-hyped and anticipated ending was in essence, a major disappointment to fans of the show. To critics like me, it just provided more cannon fodder for my distrust of local drama serials. Contrary to most, I didn’t mind the “sad” ending. In fact I applaud Mediacorp for attempting a change from the usual sappy “all’s well that end’s well” stuff they spew out on a constant basis. What I disliked was the illogical premise of the ending. How is it even possible for someone to escape from a fire that’s big enough to burn down a house without even gaining a scratch? Apart from that, I know it’s the 1960s, but you still couldn’t have made it forty odd years without contacting the supposed “love of your life”. Also, another major thing that irked me was how a six-year old Yueniang was able to lug two corpses to be buried together in a proper graveyard. And how when mother and daughter were pushed overboard on a schooner bound for the UK, they managed to so very nicely land somewhere near Malacca. Is it that expensive to hire a proof-reader for scripts?

5) Another grievance I have with the show is the horrid way the villain dies. He meets his end by shooting his own father inadvertently, before dying himself. Retribution? He rapes, kidnaps, bootlicks, AND connives with his father, and all he gets is a shot to end his life? How spectacularly underwhelming is that? Where’s the torture? Where’s the comeuppance?

Hence, the main reason why I think Mediacorp loves to toot its Little Nyonya horn is just because they did invest a whole lot in making the series. It IS state-owned after all; you can’t expect to not have an ounce of politics involved. And yes, while it is already getting on my nerves, I think it is time to applaud the company for jumping so much on the bandwagon, organizing reunion shows on Lunar New Year as well as the latest announcement that the show is amazingly available on DVD. Well, you can’t blame them for carving as many slices of the cash cow that they possibly can before the cow contracts mad cow disease. Though in my humble opinion, if I ever have to hear Pierre Png sing pantuns again, or speak Mandarin again, it’ll be ten thousand years too soon.

Article by Daniel Keng