Since the second quarter, evergreen urban dramas have made another effort.
At the beginning of the month, "Cheng Huan Ji" landed on CCTV-8 and Tencent Video, all the way high, and won the first place in CSM real-time ratings on satellite TV, and the peak real-time attention of Kuyun TV live broadcast reached 2.4940%, in addition, on April 18, "Cheng Huan Ji" landed on CCTV-1 morning file. On the online side, "Cheng Huan Ji" set a double record of Tencent Video's "The fastest urban drama station popularity to break 30,000 in 2024" and "the fastest barrage interaction to exceed 100 million", topping the Maoyan drama popularity list for many consecutive days.
Of course, the standard for measuring popular models has never been a single ratings and webcast data, and the degree of discussion on the whole network is also an important indicator. After the launch of "The Story of Cheng Huan", in addition to the "One Night Chengming" CP of the female protagonist Mai Chenghuan and the male protagonist Yao Zhiming has become a new point on the whole network, Mai Chenghuan's career line and family line in the play have also aroused extensive discussion and empathy in major communities, which can be described as an all-round "overnight fame".
The overnight success of "Cheng Huan Ji" stems from many factors. To put it simply, it set off a deep empathy on the whole network, in the heroine Mai Chenghuan, the audience saw the real family relationship and personal growth, and at a deep level, the success of "Chenghuan Ji" is better than Tencent Video's content value positioning of "back to basics" in the urban drama track.
Since last year, Tencent Video has connected many cities in the urban drama track, and the three popular urban dramas "Chenghuan Ji", "Fireworks People" and "Good Things Come in Pairs" have different characteristics and different cores, but their value anchors are unified: to find market resonance with narratives close to real life, and constantly do topic superposition and multi-dimensional innovation in traditional urban dramas.
"Cheng Huan Ji": a prism that refracts reality and ideals from multiple sides
The main story line of "Cheng Huan Ji" is very clear and clear: Mai Chenghuan (played by Yang Zi) learns to be true to herself step by step in love and family affection, and at the same time, she gradually gains recognition and understanding in her cooperation with professional hotel manager Yao Zhiming (played by Xu Kai), and has embarked on a unique growth path of her own.
On the love line, "Chenghuan Ji" portrays Mai Chenghuan's two relationships very delicately and thoroughly, and it is because of this that her sober view of love in the world can pass through the screen and enter reality, making a group of young audiences call "understand me".
In the relationship with Xin Jialiang, the strong and independent Mai Chenghuan has been working hard to solve problems in life and the workplace, while Xin Jialiang, who grew up in a wealthy family environment, is constantly avoiding problems, and the two have too much deviation from their outlook on life and values. After realizing this, Mai Cheng happily cut through the mess and decisively ended this heartbroken relationship with no future in sight.
In the fast-paced era, "Cheng Huan Ji" is willing to go through the slow fire and tell the price of emotional mismatch from the perspective of "striving for gender harmony", which is very rare. This is not only to make the audience self-identify through a typical representative failed relationship, but also to guide the audience to think deeply about "what is the correct view of love".
With the stark contrast of the previous relationship, the same frequency of the CP of "One Night Chengming" is even more precious. In the workplace work of friends and enemies and the later love run-in, Mai Chenghuan and Yao Zhiming are growing, Yao Zhiming has fireworks and human touch, and Mai Chenghuan has also changed his island self-improvement concept.
This is a love with growth, a "evenly matched", "common advance" and "two-way redemption" ideal of contemporary young people, and it is also a deep and profound control of the fundamental changes in the mate selection criteria recognized by the audience in "Cheng Huan Ji".
In addition to the career line and love line, another major drama of "Cheng Huan Ji" is the family relationship and mother-daughter relationship. The name "Chenghuan" highly condenses the predicament of Mai's original family: out of gratitude and love for her parents, she repeatedly tolerated her mother's excessive intervention in her life, but forbearance only briefly covered up the contradictions, making the mother-daughter relationship even more deformed.
Mother Liu Wanyu's love is deep but with a strong desire to control, selfless but also selfish, which is caused by Liu Wanyu's life experience and the limitations of the times. The audience was disgusted with Liu Wanyu's "Hope for a Woman to Become a Phoenix" and "Marketplace Philistine", but her eyes were red when she was protected by her daughter again and again, firmly supporting Mai Chenghuan.
After the engagement banquet, Mai Chenghuan, who couldn't bear it, chose to "leave the nest", which was not simply a gamble, but to let his mother understand his bottom line and boundaries, and no longer regard himself as a marionette, but a flesh-and-blood individual. The break became the starting point of the transformation of this mother-daughter relationship, Mai Chenghuan began to learn to find a balance between filial piety to his parents and living his own life, while Liu Wanyu was also learning to let go moderately and respect her children's choices and life.
It can be said that "Cheng Huan Ji" is an urban theme work that originates from reality and is higher than reality, it truly presents the difficulties and contradictions faced by contemporary young people in love and family, and the higher reality of the drama is reflected in the fact that it spends a lot of space to analyze the causes and solutions of problems from multiple dimensions such as social status, growth environment, and personal personality, and talks to the audience with this gentle dialogue.
From "Cheng Huan's knees" to "Cheng Huan himself", Mak Cheng Huan made his own choice, and "Cheng Huan Ji" also shows how to find the best of both worlds in an unbalanced family relationship. Mak may not be suitable for all families, but it is the best solution to the problem.
Whether it is a love line or a family line, the content production of "Cheng Huan Ji" is quite solid, and the idea is also very far-reaching. In reality, too many people are Mai Chenghuan who was "well-behaved and sensible and infinitely giving" in the first half of his life, but what "Chenghuan Ji" conveys is that he hopes that everyone can become Mai Chenghuan in the second half of his life: not dependent on others, sober in the world, always loyal to himself, and living a chic life.
Back to basics: Let urban dramas regain the texture of reality
Since last year, Tencent Video has successively output three high-quality dramas in the urban drama track, "Cheng Huan Ji", "Fireworks People" and "Good Things Come in Pairs", helping the market to improve the process of quality, and also re-leaving the anchor to guide the route.
After the broadcast of "Cheng Huan Ji", the underlying logic of Tencent Video's frequent urban dramas began to become clearer: to find market resonance with narratives close to real life, and at the same time to constantly superimpose issues and multi-dimensional innovation in traditional urban dramas to ensure the characteristics and independence of the content.
Let's first look at "Chenghuan Ji", which is adapted from Yishu's novel of the same name, which tells readers that social status and belonging must always be earned by themselves, and the series continues this idea and makes it more suitable for the perspective of modern people.
For example, Mai Chenghuan pursues career independence, emotional reciprocity, and equal voice in the family, and through the superposition of practical issues such as marriage and love issues, working women, original families, and self-achievement, "Chenghuan Ji" has achieved an in-depth dialogue with contemporary audiences.
Since the start of the broadcast, #杨紫说出了多少情侣分手的原因#, #承欢记演我和我妈闹别扭日常#, and #承欢记情绪稳定的女主人设#等话题轮番登上微博热搜. The whole network is always paying attention to when Mai Chenghuan broke up, and is also worrying about the mother-daughter relationship between Mai Chenghuan and Liu Wanyu all the way, which is inseparable from the attention and interpretation of "Chenghuan Ji" on current realistic issues.
After experiencing the adaptation, the mother-daughter relationship of "Cheng Huan Ji" is also more "contemporary". The play truly presents the imbalance in the mother-daughter relationship that is prevalent in reality, but it highlights not the binary opposition of mother and daughter, but looks at the two generations with objective strokes, emphasizing that the mother's strength is excusable, and the daughter's desire to be independent is also inevitable for growth.
"Fireworks" and "Good Things Come in Pairs", adapted from Douban Reading serialized novels, also follow the new paradigm of Tencent Video's urban drama creation. If the narrative focus of "Cheng Huan Ji" in the family unit is the mother-daughter relationship, then the perspective of the panoramic group drama "Fireworks Family" is the contemporary Chinese family emotional network.
The innovation of "Fireworks People" lies in the fact that it focuses on the intergenerational conflict and reconciliation of the three generations of the old, middle and young in the Chinese-style family, as well as the Chinese-style family concept of "breaking bones and connecting tendons", which has rarely been involved in urban themes in the past. On the basis of superimposing practical issues such as the relationship between middle-aged couples and the balance between workplace and family, "Fireworks Family" explores in depth the family concept of the new era of mutual watchfulness and upward symbiosis between three generations.
"Good Things Come in Pairs" uses Lin Shuang, a woman in a cheating family, to let the outside world see how contemporary women awaken and grow and transform under the pressure of family and workplace. is different from "Cheng Huan Ji" and "Fireworks People", "Good Things Come in Pairs" innovatively incorporates many atypical cool elements, such as the original partner and the interveneer teaming up to get what they need.
This is the first reason why Tencent Video has frequent high-quality products in the urban drama track: the track is the same but refuses to be homogeneous, and each drama can find a sharp realistic perspective and make different content characteristics. The second reason is the commonality embodied in the three dramas "Chenghuan Ji", "Fireworks People" and "Good Things Come in Pairs": the strong humanistic care color under the warm and relaxed tone.
In the warm life flow narrative, hope, transformation, growth, and upward are the core keywords of the three dramas, all of which truly portray family conflicts and social realities, and write scenes of joys and sorrows, but the landing point is always the protagonist's unremitting pursuit of self-realization, and the spiritual concept of mutual tolerance and hand in hand between family members.
Nowadays, the post-90s and post-00s generations frequently talk about the problems of their original families, and at the same time, they have gradually entered married life, began to play the role of parents, and have new topics in life. In this context, what the audience needs is to de-fast-food urban dramas and have a real texture that reflects reality, and what Tencent Video is doing is to make realist urban dramas like "Chenghuan Ji" a new medium for the audience to understand reality.
At the time of the transformation of urban dramas, Tencent Video is not only "adjudicating" the audience, but also "piloting" the market.