The brilliant time for Vietnamese TV series with ‘blockbusters’ such as ‘Nguoi phan xu’ (The Arbitrator), ‘Song chung voi me chong’ (Living with the Mother in Law), Quynh Bup be (Life of Quynh) has passed. This year many TV series aired, featuring different topics from comedies to tragedies but  few of them impressed audiences. 

The "trending" search on Google in Vietnam for series shows that the top 10 list is dominated by foreign films, mostly Korean and Chinese. 

Besides the Korean films Snowdrop and Big Mouth, three series are on Netflix, namely Business Proposal, Our Beloved Summer and All of Us Are Dead. 

Business Proposal placed in the top 3 of trending search on Google in Vietnam 2022.

Korean series have great attraction to Vietnamese audiences, while the coverage of Netflix is strong. Vietnamese TV series  cannot compete with the content on that platform.

Of the 10 most searched TV series, one is from Thailand (F4 Thailand), and four from China (Love like the Galaxy, Immortal Samsara, Love between Fairy and Devil, and Lighter and Princess).

Vietnamese films are facing stiff competition and are weak in catching the audience’s attention. The failure of local TV series with tragic ratings such as ‘Thong gia ngo hep’ (Unexpected In-Laws) and ‘Hanh trinh cong ly’ (The good wife) is because of unattractive content, especially when more valuable products are provided on pay-TV channels.

The dominance of Hollywood films can be seen in the category of popular searches of movies at cinemas.

However, two Vietnamese names can be found among them – Em va Trinh (You and Trinh) and Trinh Cong Son. Two are about the late songwriter Trinh Cong Son. 

To date, You and Trinh remains the movie with the highest revenue in 2022 (about VND100 billion, according to Box Office Vietnam). Trinh Cong Son was withdrawn from cinemas early and brought revenue of only VND2 billion, but it once became a hot keyword on Google Vietnam because it raised controversy.

My Anh