The Victims’ Game – Entertainment Tackling Mental Health Issues

The Victims’ Game is the top ranking Taiwanese series on Netflix.

An original series starring Joseph Chang, Ann Hsu and Shih-Sian Wang, it centers on a forensic scientist with Asperger’s called Fang Yi-jen played by Chang, and Ann Hsu as a journalist called Hsu Hai-yin.

A Greener Grass production, the show has been sat atop the Netflix rankings in Taiwan since its April release date, and is increasingly drawing attention from other Asian countries as it competes with the omnipresent Korean love-comedies or U.S. based dramas.

Protagonist Fang Yi-Jen, on finding the fingerprint of his missing daughter linked to a series of homicides, is forced into working with investigative journalist played by Ann Hsu as he works to discover his own daughter’s link with these cases.

In similar form to a previous Greener Grass production “The World Between Us”, The Victims’ Game has taken the issue of random murders by the horns leading to a wider discussion on mental health issues across Taiwanese society.

The show depicts the struggles faced by social minorities including transsexuals, former prison inmates, the physically disabled, and even those with suicidal tendencies and associated mental illnesses.

And in modern Taiwan with a recent spate of highly controversial judgements relating to seemingly random murders lacking defined motives, but carried out by individuals eventually found to be mentally disturbed, this latest Greener Grass Production has taken on society’s misunderstandings towards those suffering mental conditions.

In a society in which, from 2016, to 2018, the number of patients seeking professional psychiatric help increased by a significant four percent to 14 percent of the general population, some of these issues are becoming more and more prevalent – especially so given that Taiwan government spending on mental health care is so far behind the numbers looking for help.