Q Series: How a Laptop Maker Planted the Seeds of Taiwan's TV Drama Revival

30-second overview: In August 2016, eight Taiwanese TV dramas premiered simultaneously. The creative teams included legendary directors such as Tsai Ming-liang and Chen Yu-hsun, yet the casts were entirely made up of freshly trained newcomers. The funder was Tzu-Hsien Tung, chairman of Pegatron Corporation — a tech figure who built his fortune on laptop contract manufacturing. The logic behind Q Series was counterintuitive: pair the most seasoned masters with the greenest apprentices, and pour resources into "seeds" rather than "fruits." Two years later, names such as 許光漢 (Greg Hsu), Chen Yu, and Liu Kuan-ting had emerged from the cohort of 24 new actors; the Taiwanese drama industry had also gained proof that genre diversity could survive on local screens.

At the end of 2014, director Wang Shaudi called seven old friends with a direct question: "Are you willing to spend time mentoring newcomers?"

On the other end of the line were Tsai Ming-liang, Chen Yu-hsun, Qu You-ning, Xu Jie-hui, Xu Fu-jun, Wang Ming-tai, and An Zhe-yi — all directors with decades of experience in Taiwanese cinema and television. In that era, hiring these people was usually about chasing high ratings or big-budget productions. But what Wang Shaudi was proposing was simply mentoring newcomers.

She selected 24 promising talents — dubbed the "Q Seeds" (好植之徒) — from over 300 applicants and enrolled them in the "Q Place Performance Academy" she had founded. Training ranged from Peking opera movement and clowning rhythm to modern dance bodywork, all designed to recalibrate the modern body through the discipline of traditional theater. The first real battlefield for these 24 trainees was the eight-series lineup of Q Series. Wang Shaudi's intent was clear: "Q Series is a garden where we can breathe freely and grow together — not just the little Q actors honing their craft, but directors, screenwriters, and behind-the-scenes crew supporting one another and advancing together." (Quoted from Wang Shaudi's original statement as cited on Wikipedia)

A Laptop Maker's Cultural Gamble

The entire project required funding, and that funding came from an unlikely source: Tzu-Hsien Tung, chairman of Pegatron Corporation. In Taiwan's tech industry, Tung is known for co-founding ASUS and later leading Pegatron's Apple contract manufacturing business — a quintessential hardware industry titan. He has simultaneously supported Eslite Bookstore for years, sponsored 雲門舞集 (Cloud Gate Dance Theatre), invested in A Touch of Green (一把青), and donated to the Yang Mu Literary Prize. Crossing between technology and the arts has long been a hallmark of his personal ethos.

In 2016, through his cultural venture Art & Culture Foundation (藝碩文創), he made Q Series a reality. From a commercial standpoint, the decision was baffling: pairing the most experienced directors with the least known actors, in an environment dominated by Korean and Chinese dramas, guaranteed neither ratings nor returns. When asked about his motivation, a company representative relayed his attitude as "a passion for the arts, creativity, and talent cultivation that has never stopped." For him, the project was more a long-term investment in Taiwan's cultural ecosystem than a short-term profit calculation.

Wang Shaudi's explanation of the investment logic was more blunt. In an interview with BIOS monthly, she said directly: "This game has stopped being fun! So we want to make the game more interesting." This willful insistence on "making the game fun" was rooted in a deep frustration with the idol-drama formula and formulaic state of Taiwanese television at the time. She hoped that through this platform, creators would no longer be shackled by ratings pressure but could rediscover the joy and courage of storytelling.

📝 Curator's Note
Pairing the most seasoned masters with the greenest apprentices is, paradoxically, a talent cultivation accelerator.
Apprentices are pulled into the highest-standard working environment in the shortest possible time — this is not mere charity, but a highly efficient form of hands-on training.
What Taiwan's film and television industry has never lacked is talent; what it has lacked is a professional space like Q Series that allows for failure and accommodates experimentation.

Eight Dramas, Four Genres

The full scope of Q Series comprised 8 dramas, totaling 52 episodes, neatly divided into four core thematic genres. Each genre contained two stylistically distinct standalone series, broadcast in a weekly strip on TTV, GTV, and PTS over the course of one year starting August 2016. This "genre drama" experiment was itself a declaration: Taiwan's television screens should not be limited to idol dramas and long-running soap operas.

The distribution of these four genres forcibly expanded the boundaries of what Taiwanese audiences imagined a "TV drama" could be. At the time, locally produced dramas were in a slump, with imported series crowding out space for domestic creation. Through its planned, serialized output, Q Series proved that homegrown genre dramas were fully competitive with foreign imports in both production quality and narrative ability.

Fresh Faces in _Love of Sandstorm_

In 2016, a young man who had transitioned from vocal training to acting — struggling to find his footing in the entertainment industry — received a casting notice from Q Series. In Love of Sandstorm, he played a handsome yet slightly comedic senior; in Have You Ever Fallen in Love, Miss Jiang?, he took on the role of a sexually addicted man with intellectual disability. The role demanded extreme physical intensity and restrained emotional processing; during filming, he admitted to the media that the process was "extremely agonizing."

That young man's name is now a household name: 許光漢 (Greg Hsu). His stunning performance in Miss Jiang earned him his first Golden Bell nomination for Best Supporting Actor at the 52nd awards. This is not merely a breakout story for a newcomer — it is proof of the power of Q Series' mentorship model: veteran directors like Wang Shaudi and Chen Yu-hsun personally coached these completely inexperienced "little Qs" on set.

Chen Yu and Liu Kuan-ting also shone through Q Series. Chen Yu won the Golden Bell Best Newcomer award for Love of Sandstorm, while Liu Kuan-ting honed his craft across multiple series. The logic of Q Series received its most solid validation here: you don't need to play it safe by casting already-famous actors. Given the right professional environment and sufficient rehearsal time, newcomers can bloom brilliantly even under the most demanding production standards.

_A Boy Named Flora A_ Made a Rural Taichung Village the Stage

Among the eight dramas, the one with the strongest mass appeal, highest ratings, and greatest success in reaching everyday audiences was A Boy Named Flora A. Adapted from author Yang Fu-min's novel The Boy Named Flora A, it was directed by Qu You-ning, who excels at capturing local Taiwanese sentiment. He boldly cast singer Lu Guang-tseng — who had zero prior acting experience — as Zheng Hua-jia, a 28-year-old underachiever who never finished college and grew up in his hometown's ancestral hall.

In 2017, when Korean hits like Descendants of the Sun dominated, this drama carved out a path with its raw vitality, weaving Taiwanese Hokkien and Mandarin together. The premiere episode broke a 1.22% viewership rating, and a long-take argument scene went viral on social media, sparking nationwide discussions about rural connections and family bonds. The fervor ultimately led to the 2018 film adaptation Back to the Good Times (花甲大人轉男孩), successfully transforming a television experiment into a commercial Lunar New Year theatrical release.

The success of this drama carries profound symbolic significance: it shattered the prejudice that "local subject matter equals tackiness." Through refined cinematography and a solid script structure, a Taiwanese village funeral and its family entanglements became as compelling a contemporary myth as any Korean drama. It made the industry believe again that as long as the story is told well and the characters feel real, Taiwanese audiences will absolutely pay for stories rooted in their own land.

The Golden Bell Scorecard: Substantive Weight

The data from two Golden Bell Awards ceremonies constitutes Q Series' most impressive objective report card. At the 52nd Golden Bell Awards in 2017, the first five Q Series entries collectively garnered 24 nominations — a new record for a single production entity. By the 53rd Golden Bell Awards in 2018, A Boy Named Flora A carried the torch, sweeping multiple major awards and pushing this gentle revolution to its peak.

These awards were spread across different production teams, confirming that Q Series was not propped up by a single "masterpiece" but represented an overall elevation of industry standards. Flora A's sweep at the 53rd Golden Bell Awards was particularly symbolic: it represented a rare alignment between popular taste and professional critical judgment on the Q Series platform. Lu Guang-tseng's sweep of both Best Actor and Best Newcomer as a singer-turned-actor became a near-unprecedented record in Golden Bell history.

Aftershakes and Reflections After the Game Ended

After the first season of Q Series concluded, it was not only met with flowers and applause — it also sparked deep discussions about labor conditions in the film and television industry. Critics pointed out that this "public-welfare" structure of senior figures mentoring juniors was, in commercial terms, difficult to sustain long-term. In late 2017, reports emerged of delayed screenwriter payments and layoff disputes at Q Series; Wang Shaudi issued a joint statement clarifying that accounts were transparent and emphasizing the difficulties of talent cultivation.

For Wang Shaudi, this was not a perfect social experiment — it was a pool of water that had to be stirred in order to "survive." In her public response, she admitted that she was not deliberately trying to challenge any grand system; rather, the existing mode of production had already drained the talent pool. Although the company behind the project, How Good Creative Execution (好風光創意執行), underwent organizational adjustments after the first season, this did not mean the experiment was over. The greatest asset this experiment left behind was the knowledge that Taiwanese audiences have taste — they are waiting for stories of diverse human experience.

Q Series 2 (茁劇場): Seeds Taking Root and Thriving

In 2021, the spirit of Q Series was officially revived under the name "Q Series 2" (茁劇場). Wang Shaudi once again assembled a new generation of directors and screenwriters, attempting to continue this talent revolution. This time, the focus extended beyond actor discovery to the adaptation of Taiwanese literary works, aiming to strengthen the textual depth of local dramas. The seeds planted in the first season have now grown into towering trees shading Taiwan's film and television landscape.

Names such as 許光漢 (Greg Hsu), Liu Kuan-ting, Sun Ke-fang, Chen Yu, and Jiang Yi-rong are now regulars on Golden Horse and Golden Bell Awards lists. They are no longer the trembling "little Qs" — they are professionals capable of carrying both ratings and artistic merit on their own. More importantly, Q Series changed the Taiwanese film and television industry's perception of "newcomers": as long as systematic support is in place, newcomers are the most powerful force for industry revitalization. This logic of "investing in people rather than investing in traffic" has become a crucial foundation for the recent international success of Taiwanese dramas.

In 2024, when looking back at the history of Taiwan's TV drama revival, people often mention the influx of funding from Netflix and Disney+. However, before these major international platforms formally established themselves in Taiwan, there was a group of people who planted these restless seeds in the late-night time slots on TTV and PTS. It was a hard-fought battle won purely through professional dedication to drama — with no big-data predictions and no traffic-star endorsements.

What it left behind was not just a few good dramas, but an answer that continues to sprout to this day: it turns out that Taiwanese TV dramas could be more than what they were.

References

• Q Series - Wikipedia (Primary source: complete project documentation)
• "The Younger Generation Can Tell Stories, but Fundamentals Are the Key": Wang Shaudi Interview - BIOS monthly (2016 interview on the original intent behind talent cultivation)
• Wang Shaudi from Q Series to Q Series 2: Gently Reforming Taiwanese Drama Through New Talent - Elle Taiwan (2022 report reviewing the reform journey)
• Interview with Wang Shaudi: After Four Years, Q Series 2 Restirs Taiwan's Film and Television Ocean - TNL The News Lens (2024 report)
• 12 Stories About Greg Hsu Heading to Hollywood for _Shang-Chi 2_ - Elle Taiwan (2024 retrospective on actor development)
• The "Truth Behind Q Series' Funding Withdrawal and Shutdown"! Internal Executives Reveal the Facts - ETtoday Star Cloud (2017 report on funding and organizational issues)
• Q Series — A Boy Named Flora A - Wikipedia (Ratings and social impact records)
• Q Series Tells Stories Rooted in Taiwan: Wang Shaudi Shares the Burning Seed Within - Tatler Asia (2021 interview)
• Successors to Greg Hsu and Liu Kuan-ting? Q Series 2 Opens Auditions for "8 Little Qs" - UDN Stars (2020 report on the second-generation project)