Gun fights, police sirens and car chases - this isn't some random thriller or gangster film, but the trailer for Chinese anti-graft TV drama In the Name of People, which debuts on Hunan Satellite TV on Tuesday.
Sponsored by the TV and Film Production Center under the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP), the series takes the central government's recent crackdown on corruption as its background. Featuring an antagonist who is a national-level official, the show has been dubbed by Chinese media as "the country's most daring TV series about anti-graft efforts."
Set in a fictional province of Handong, the series follows SPP prosecutor Hou Liangping as he investigates cases involving corrupt officials.
Although it is adapted from a novel of the same title authored by Chinese writer Zhou Meisen, the show is not complete fiction. Many of the characters are based on real people and plenty of the show's cases are adapted from true events.
Based on reality
"For instance, the division chief in my book accused of embezzling 230 million yuan ($33.4 million) is a typical example of a seriously corrupt low-level official," the 61-year-old writer said in an interview with the Beijing News on March 19.
According to Zhou, the character was inspired by the case of Wei Pengyuan, former deputy head of the coal department at the National Energy Administration who was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve in 2016 for corruption.
"They are not devils, however," a Beijing Daily report from Saturday quoted Zhou as saying. "They are also flesh and blood human beings."
A veteran screenwriter adept at depicting the Chinese political system and best known for his political TV adaptations such as Absolute Power (2002) and The State's Public Prosecutors (2003), Zhou told the Beijing Daily that the new series started in 2015 when the SPP approached him and said they were looking to produce a show since "a decent TV production on anti-corruption, a nationwide concern since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, had not yet been made."
While he was writing the book In the Name of People and its accompanying screenplay, Zhou met and talked with convicted officials in person in Pukou Prison in Nanjing, capital of East China's Jiangsu Province, accompanied by the SPP staff. He finished both the book and the scripts for the show in two years.
"The character of the national-level official was not in my original plan. The highest-ranking official in the book was a deputy secretary of a provincial committee of the CPC," Zhou told the Beijing Daily.
Later, a remark by Zhai Taifeng, former Party chief of the China Writers Association, caused him to change his outlook on things.
"Do you think it is appropriate to understate the situation in your novel during a time when anti-graft efforts are getting tougher?" Zhai said. The remark led to Zhou changing the character for the show from a provincial official to a nation-level one.
Despite rumors that Zhou had access to "confidential files," Zhou said this was not the case.
"But I did get a lot of support from the SPP. They arranged trips and interviews for me and never interfered in my writing," Zhou told Jiefang Weekend on Friday.
Apart from interviews with officials, Zhou said he also used materials available on the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China as a major reference.
Zhou talked about another "breakthrough" the TV series has made.
In addition to anti-graft efforts, the show also explores the dark side of the political system in which officials in Handong Province form fractions and interest groups.
"I want to depict the bad political ecosystem behind these anti-graft cases," he told the Beijing Daily.
Genre revival
"Administrators might have regarded anti-graft TV dramas as something negative in the past," Zhou said to the Beijing Daily. "But now it's different because corruption is something we should face head on. It won't disappear just because you close your eyes."
Zhou originally thought the huge project, which boasts a budget of 120 million yuan ($17.4 million), would take an extraordinary amount of time and effort to pass review by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT). Two of his previous TV works in this genre had to make more than 800 changes in order to be approved.
However, review and approval of In the Name of People took just 10 days.
Considering the government's support, Zhou views the series as a new dawn which will lead to a golden age for anti-graft productions.
Zhou may not be far off the mark.
After a decade of silence on the small screen due to tougher SAPPRFT restrictions on crime TV series, the debut of In the Name of People and the broadcast of TV series People's Prosecutors in 2016 could be considered a sign that this genre is about to experience a revival.
Aside from TV productions, things seem to be changing when it comes to literary works about anti-graft efforts.
Though books on corruption experienced a boom during the 1990s, works in this genre dropped off over the past decade as writers such as Lu Tianming and Zhou Meisen produced less works of this type, according to a 2015 Beijing Daily report.
But the genre looks to be picking up now.
Quzhong Renzai, a novel focusing on corrupt officials, by Chinese writer Zhou Daxin received quite a number of four-star reviews when it hit stands in 2015. It currently holds a 7.6/10 on Chinese media review site Douban.
Chinese writer Ding Jie's Zhui Wen (Quest), based on oral accounts of a number of cases in which corrupt officials were removed from their posts, is due to release in April.
In 2015, Nobel-winning Chinese writer Mo Yan announced that he was planning to write a novel focusing on corruption, according to a report from the Xinhua News Agency.
