flâneur

Inside the World-Conquering Rise of the Micro-Drama | The New Yorker

newyorker.com · 3,447 words · saved by 1 readers

Serialized soap operas split into minute-long episodes, known as micro-dramas, may be TV’s new frontier.

Much of humanity has now watched—or scrolled past—extremely short shows about love and betrayal. How do Chinese companies create them? April 25, 2026 Illustration by Rui Pu Hengdian World Studios, the largest film complex in existence, takes its name from the pastoral town in southern China that it bestrides. On a frosty Tuesday afternoon in February, I took a cab through farmlands and faded storefronts, toward a hulking replica of the Forbidden City. I had come to see the set of a micro-drama—one of the serialized soap operas, split into minute-long episodes, that have mesmerized global…

saved by

related reading