Is it a case of the more the merrier or will too many cooks spoil the broth?
This article from Real Sound raises the above question by looking at the dramas from TBS' Sundays 9pm timeslot which has consistently done better than its competition in terms of ratings and critical reviews despite the languishing real-time ratings in recent years amid the rise of alternative viewing channels such as TVer and a wider variety of content vying for eyeballs such as those from Netflix.
While Japanese dramas traditionally tend to be written by a single scriptwriter, there is an increasing number of dramas featuring a main writer with assistants or multiple scriptwriters to share the workload or producing a collective script in the Hollywood style of "writers' room" where the team can range from as many as 10 to 20 writers. Recent examples in Japan which adopted the Hollywood style include NHK 2024 drama "3000-man" and Amazon Prime Video 2023 drama "Angel Flight".
Given that the Sundays 9pm timeslot is TBS' crown jewel in its drama programming, it is no wonder that a lot of time and resources are put into the offerings. However, the TV station's attempts to experiment with various genres and writing styles may not always turn out to deliver desired results. For example, while "VIVANT" in 2023 may have been a hit in terms of scale, the star-studded line-up and unexpected storyline which was kept a secret until the first OA, the response to last season's "Mikami-sensei" was somewhat divided especially over the long, complicated and philosophical lines in the script which required a fair bit of brain power to process.
The article highlights this season's "Caster" as being one of the unusual examples in this timeslot for having as many as 6 scriptwriters compared to the usual 1 to 4 writers in most dramas these days. Considering that a Sundays 9pm timeslot drama these days tends to last for 10 episodes, this actually means that each scriptwriter will probably get to work on slightly less than 1.5 episode (if divided equally). However, it is not known if they will actually co-write for each episode or divide individual episodes among themselves.
One thing to note though, the last time a Sundays 9pm timeslot drama had 6 writers was in 2023's "Get Ready!" which was criticized for the lack of consistency in its story caused by fluctuating tones, writing style and story tempo back then. While it may be good to bounce off ideas from one another with a team of writers, it can also be risky if the team fails to agree on a single approach or chooses the wrong one when faced with varying viewpoints and options or worse still, come up with a script that has developments which do not agree with one another.
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After reading this article, I wanted to investigate whether the number of scriptwriters do have a part to play in a drama's success/failure and if there are indeed trends pointing to a shift from single scriptwriters towards the multiple-writers system. As such, I obtained data for the TBS Sundays 9pm timeslot based on their offerings for the past decade and also tried to compare between figures from the pre- and post-COVID eras.
No. of dramas between Winter 2015 and Autumn 2019 = 20 (Pre-COVID)
No. of dramas between Winter 2020 and Winter 2025 = 19 (Post-COVID)
*Note that the Spring 2020 drama "Hanzawa Naoki 2020" was postponed to Summer 2020 due to the lockdown caused by the COVID pandemic.
*I did not include "Caster" in the sample for the Post-COVID group since it is still running.
*Ratings information are based on the Kanto region thus may not reflect the true popularity and extent of viewership on both domestic and international streaming platforms.
Key observations over the past decade
- The number of dramas which were real-life adaptations from novels and manga were about the same for pre-COVID (10 out of 20) and post-COVID (9 out of 19).
- Why I chose to make a distinction between the originals and adaptations in my analysis is that scriptwriters working on the latter need to fit their work within the parameters of the source material thus would have lesser creative freedom to do their thing. On the other hand, those doing originals have to bear the risk of their own ideas going either way - could be a success or flop.
- One other thing to note is the difference between 原作 (original work) and 原案 (original draft). In the former, the scriptwriter has an original novel/manga etc. to adapt into a drama's script but in the latter, a draft with the broad outline of the characters and story setting is written by someone else other than the scriptwriter. As such, 原案 works are somewhat in the middle of the spectrum with adaptations and original creations at both ends and can be likened to be a "template" for scriptwriters to work with. In the pre-COVID days, there were no 原案 dramas but after the pandemic, there were at least 2 in this timeslot. This might be something to look out for in future - the concept of "DCU" was from overseas producers while "Gekokujou Kyuuji" was based on a non-fiction book about a true story.
- The number of Sundays 9pm dramas written by single scriptwriters was the same for both periods i.e. 11 out of 20 for pre-COVID and 11 out of 19 for post-COVID.
- While some may say that there seems to be more dramas with multiple scriptwriters these days, the truth is that at least for this particular timeslot, it still seems to be fairly distributed between single and multiple scriptwriter systems for now.
- However, the average number of scriptwriters for each Sundays 9pm drama has indeed increased. From an average of 1.65 writers per drama in the pre-COVID days, it does seem like there is a shift towards the multiple writers format with an average of 2.47 per drama in the post-COVID era.
- It can also be observed that in terms of the number of writers per drama, the norm before COVID was anything from 2 to 4 but 4 seems to be the ideal number as seen in the post-COVID era with some going up to as many as 6 for a 10-episode drama series. This should explain why the average jumped so much in the past 5 years.
- The length of a drama in this timeslot seems to be headed towards the sweet spot of 10 episodes per season post-COVID as compared to a variety of numbers in the pre-COVID era (ranging from 7 to 12). The average number of episodes per drama was 9.85 before 2000 but after that, the average inched up to 10.42.
- As compared to the past when there was more or less standardization in terms of start and end dates for the seasonal dramas, there is a lot more variation these days with some having start dates before the beginning of the first month in the season and some not starting until the competition is already done with 2 or 3 episodes.
- Despite so, to have the same number of episodes each season at 10 per drama since Spring 2022 (except for "Atomu no ko" which had only 9 episodes) seems to suggest the trend going forward that this is the preferred number of episodes for dramas in this timeslot.
- In terms of performance based on average ratings, while the number of dramas which got an average above 10% was about the same at 15 titles for each period, the average rating was actually higher post-COVID at 13.39% compared to 12.81% pre-COVID.
- It is important to note that the post-COVID era included the monster hit "Hanzawa Naoki" which had a high average of 24.7% that was easily double of most offerings so this brought the average up significantly. In addition, the average ratings between 2020 and 2022 (the height of the pandemic where more people stayed home) were higher as compared to when restrictions were relaxed and people could head out more than before.
- However, if you delve deeper in the 10%-and-above "hits" for both eras, only 6 out of 15 were written by single scriptwriters in the pre-COVID era while as many as 9 out of 15 were from solo scriptwriters in the post-COVID era.
- What this probably suggests is that putting an entire drama in the hands of one scriptwriter can turn out to be a huge gamble thus resulting in the subsequent shift towards multiple scriptwriters as a form of risk mitigation by the TV station.
- On the other hand, since dramas by multiple scriptwriters tend to be those who are relatively unknown or fresh to this industry, it also helps in giving them experience without the burden of shouldering a drama's fate single-handedly.
- In most scenarios, the staff credits list do not actually make a distinction in terms of hierarchy in the scriptwriting team. It is only when there is a main writer that the others are named as assistants e.g. "Mikami-sensei". As such, it looks from the outside that the members in such teams are on equal footing (more or less).
- The higher success rate in the post-COVID era also needs to be considered along with the pandemic's situation between 2020 and 2022 when more people stayed home to watch TV. As such, out of the 9 hits in this period, 7 of them were from these years while there was only 1 in 2023 and 1 in 2025.
- The 3 dramas which got above 10% in 2024 were all written by teams of 4 scriptwriters while the only solo work "Umi ni nemuru daiyamondo" in the same year had a single-digit average rating.
- Interestingly, while the 6 hits in the pre-COVID era were all from different solo writers, Kuroiwa Tsutomu accounted for as many as 4 out of the 9 hits in the post-COVID era i.e. "Kiken na Venus", "TOKYO MER", "My Family" and "Last Man Zenmou no sousakan". Of these, only "Kiken na Venus" was an adaptation from a novel so the others were all original scripts.
- On the other hand, the only other scriptwriter who had more than 1 hit in the past decade was Morishita Yoshiko but her two works were from different eras i.e. 2015's "Tennou no ryouriban" in the pre-COVID era and 2021's "Tengoku to Jigoku" from the post-COVID days. Perhaps this phenomenon seems to reflect a tendency to go back to tried-and-tested names when engaging solo writers because of the stakes involved for a golden timeslot like this?
On a personal note, I do pay attention to the scriptwriter other than the cast lineup and genre when deciding what to watch. While I do have some favourites, it is not always a given that I will like everything from them. Likewise, I don't really shun works by people I am not aware of or familiar with since the cast and genre tend to play a more significant part in influencing my decision. Of course, there are some who I know I probably wouldn't like because of their style of writing or past bad experience and would approach such works with a bit more caution and apprehension.
One other thing which I do not really like is the idea of putting big names together to work on the same story especially if their styles are totally different and very hard to integrate with each other. One recent example I can think of is Netflix's "Rikon shiyouyo" - my conclusion is that the styles of Kudo Kankuro and Ooishi Shizuka just do not match and their individual strengths do not get amplified by putting them together.
Just based on the findings above, I think what's clear is that the more established names in the industry are likely to be the ones who get sole responsibility and power to write their scripts on their own especially for a primetime slot like TBS' Sundays 9pm. On the other hand, the willingness to shift towards having multiple writers can be good for the industry as a whole to introduce fresh and varied perspectives but it does come with a risk of the story being messed up. How to strike a balance between the need for consistently high quality throughout the entire drama and risk & resource management within the confines of the harsher operating environment is going to be an important issue to consider. Otherwise, it will be even hard to get access to good scriptwriters and nurture new ones when they get wooed with more resources from companies with deeper pockets and enjoy more creative liberty beyond what's allowed on traditional TV. In the end, viewers like us would probably not get to enjoy good productions if the scriptwriter i.e. one of the three key pillars in drama production is not there to shore up the story even with the best cast and staff lineup.
