A Cambodian TV soap opera is entertaining viewers spreading important health messages, with a little help from BBC’s Albert Square, writes Helena Merriman.

A film set depicting a Cambodian hospital is so realistic that people seeking treatment regularly turn up at the gates looking for help. Taste of Life is Cambodia’s first long-running TV soap in the Khmer language, which aims to increase knowledge and understanding of issues such as HIV and AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, and maternal and child health. The project is run by the BBC World Service Trust – the BBC’s international charity which uses the media to help advance development goals worldwide. Taste of Life is part of a three-year, DFID-funded health project run by the Trust in Cambodia. The gritty and authentic series explores health issues in a dramatic form – all based in a Cambodian, “real life” teaching hospital. The drama is written and produced by young Cambodian script-writers, actors and production staff helping to stimulate local production capacity and provide skills for Cambodia’s young broadcast sector.

The show’s director, Matthew Robinson brings experience from another gritty, street-level drama, Eastenders. Formerly Executive Producer of the hit British soap, he believes that essentially there is not much difference in approach between the two. “Good stories well told will win audiences in London and Phnom Penh,” he says.

“Good stories are about hopes and fears of everyday folk. The secret is to exaggerate those hopes and fears, mostly a little but occasionally a lot.” He continues, “Trollope said a novel is ordinary people doing extraordinary things. I applied that at Eastenders and our Cambodian writers apply it at Taste of Life. Episode one ended with a joy-riding student nurse accidentally killing his college principal’s wife.”

What differences there are, are mainly cultural he maintains. “In British soaps, triangles are king: Boy meets Girl, Boy kisses Girl, Girl kisses Boy, Boy kisses another Girl, Girl leaves Boy and everyone’s unhappy.

In Cambodia, triangles are proscribed. Here: Boy meets Girl, Boy marries Girl, Boy kisses Girl (on the cheek) and everyone’s happy (supposedly).

In Britain, TV family rows are ubiquitous. In Cambodia, raised voices at breakfast are rarities, however gregious the off-spring or parent.”

Despite these social morés, Matthew Robinson says, by taking calculated risks and dramatic license, the show has been able to deal with sensitive issues. “We were told we could never show a 20-year girl walking into a snooker hall.

A student remonstrating with an incompetent teacher? Impossible. Ignore endemic prostitution. Solution? Dig for truth behind the culture then dramatize that truth little by little, sensitively but resolutely.” Taste of Life, he says, is now depicting “meatier incidents” than the show’s young writers ever imagined. “Two months ago a couple actually kissed – only for a second but kiss they did, and on the lips. One month ago our 21-year old role model soundly chastised his father for risking his mother’s health through unprotected sex with his mistress.

No balloons went up at these assaults on traditional values. Enthusiastic text messages kept arriving. Viewers kept watching. We weren’t shut down.”

Quite the opposite. Initially set to run for only 60 episodes, Taste of Life has been so well received that it has just been extended by a further 40 episodes over the next year. These are broadcast on two of Cambodia’s most popular TV stations twice a week, with each station also showing repeats the same week. The drama itself works as part of a more comprehensive campaign, including one-minute TV and radio public service announcement spots. These are broadcast thousands of times over the course of the project via local commercial, NGO and government stations. The campaign also includes four weekly radio phone-in programmes, all intended to encourage Cambodians to talk about sex and its surrounding issues.

This three year project offers a unique approach to tackling these health issues in one of the worst-affected countries in the world. According to UNAIDS, Cambodia has the world’s highest prevalence of HIV outside Africa and the Caribbean. By 2001, an estimated 170,000 adults carried the HIV virus, affecting 2.7 per cent of those aged between 15-49. Of these, 46 per cent are women, and some 30 per cent of new transmissions were from husband to wife.

In a country such as Cambodia, where talking about HIV and AIDS and sex has been taboo, the challenge has been both to generate public debate on these issues and provide accurate information. The TV soap-opera format offers the ideal vehicle for sparking such conversation. It can also explore the underlying issues of many of Cambodia’s health problems – such as the gender dynamics underlying condom use and multipartner sex.

The soap has even been able to tackle subjects which do not obviously lend themselves to TV drama – like maternal and child health. Nevertheless, using every trick in the dramatist's book, Taste of Life has managed to run several stories on diarrhoea, Acute Respiratory Infections, breastfeeding and the importance of pre-natal check-ups.

The stories in the series have also highlighted other social dilemmas important to Cambodians – including domestic violence, road safety, landmine awareness, drug abuse, human trafficking and child labour.

The attention to detail in Taste of Life goes far beyond TV production values. The team’s researchers work with a network of health specialists from the World Health Organisation, UN agencies, the Cambodian Ministry of Health and other government and other NGOs to ensure that these issues are all covered correctly.

There is, arguably, a creative tension between telling a compelling story and delivering an important message. Matthew Robinson is aware of the potential conflict but believes both can be served. “In relation to HIV stories, by previously building viewers’ emotional investment in the infected character, the story will seamlessly merge with messages – preventative and remedial.

By sleight of pen, audiences will not feel lectured. They will learn while being entertained and will not reach for the remote control.”

In order to ensure that the programme is being watched, the issues talked about and information absorbed continuous research and evaluation is done during every stage of the project. Every episode is tested with audiences using a “Rapid Feedback” methodology developed by the BBC World Service Trust’s Cambodian research team. This involves a regular audience panel in 20 different communities giving regular feedback on the show’s messages, characters and quality.

Research shows that the soap is not only enjoyed by the audience, but also that they understand and accept the wide range of messages integrated into the action.

A mid-term study of 2,280 15-35 year old radio listeners and TV viewers, (the HIV and AIDS project’s target audience) from 21 of Cambodia’s 24 provinces found that 92 per cent of respondents had seen or heard something about HIV and AIDS in the media in the past year. The study also discovered that combined use of TV and radio helped achieve this reach. Furthermore, Taste of Life was among the main HIV and AIDS media audiences recalled with 67 per cent of TV viewers saying they had watched Taste of Life. Of this audience, nearly one third said they felt the programme was about “Cambodian Life”, an indication of the success of realistically portraying contemporary Khmer society. The drama’s audience also clearly understood the drama’s health content, with 87 percent reporting that it was about HIV and AIDS. And critically, Taste of Life audience members consistently reported that they were “talking more” than the rest of the people surveyed.

In preparation for the next 40 episodes, wide-ranging consultation with audience members has taken place using community forums and a survey of panel members to ensure its continued popularity and resonance among Cambodians.

Beyond the life of this soap, this BBC World Service Trust project is committed to local capacity building. The Cambodian media scene is largely undeveloped due to a weak market and a poorly educated population. There is also a dearth of creative talent in the wake of the Cambodian genocide. An integral part of the project is the use of local talent, which in this case meant training the entire production team on Taste of Life from scratch. In this way it has contributed to the growing pool of actors, directors, script-writers, cameramen and women who are forming Cambodia’s small but growing media industry.

The BBC World Service Trust’s Director, Stephen King, says “as an organisation constantly looking for ways to effectively use media to advance development goals, we feel Taste of Life is breaking new ground. The work of DFID, the local Cambodian staff and NGOs, and the Trust team is proving a winning combination in producing a popular and meaningful show that has the potential to tangibly improve the every day lives of Cambodians.”

More information
BBC World Service Trust