The Guide #244: From Chinese microdramas to an Arctic comedy – what the world is watching

It’s high time for another of our occasional glances at what the world is watching; the TV popular on the beats covered by some of the Guardian’s many global correspondents. Last time we asked our reporters in Brazil, Jamaica, Japan, Nigeria and Poland, and heard about everything from telenovelas to Caribbean breakfast TV. This time we’ve commissioned a different set of correspondents to tell us about what’s driving the watercooler conversation in the countries they currently call home. Read on for Chinese microdramas, a worthy follow-up to Heated Rivalry and the show that has the hair salons of Côte d’Ivoire abuzz. *** Argentina | Envidiosa (Envious) It makes sense that, in a country often said to have the highest number of psychoanalysts per capita, one of its biggest TV hits would feature a therapist patiently “aha-ing” and “mmm-ing” a protagonist into self-awareness in every episode. It also makes sense that Envidiosa, whose fourth and final season premiered on Netflix on 29 April, has sparked debate in an Argentina still shaped by the feminist wave that culminated in the legalisation of abortion in 2020. The series, which premiered in 2024, is a romcom starring Griselda Siciliani as Vicky, a 40-year-old spiralling after a breakup, watching others fulfil her long-held dream of marriage. From the outset, some feminist voices dismissed the show as a regressive “telenovela”, with its protagonist’s driving desire to get married and have kids seen as excessively patriarchal. However, according to feminist journalist María Florencia Alcaraz, its cultural resonance lies precisely in that tension. The series, she told the Guardian, speaks to “a ‘sandwich’ generation … caught between the feminist effervescence of 2015 to 2020 and the enduring weight of traditional mandates”. Vicky is not a feminist heroine – she’s hardly a heroine at all – but she is shaped by feminist questions about desire and autonomy. Its broad comedy and heightened archetypes make room for something…