As the popularity of vertical dramas surges across the entertainment space, a genre that may have fallen by the wayside of popular culture has found a place on the mobile screens. Soap-opera-like plotlines with telenovela-esque spectacular romances, marked with suggestive dialogues between actors and never-ending eye contact that supposedly speaks a thousand words — this is the type of content that is being produced for the viewing pleasure of the mobile audience.
Holding your attention for no longer than a minute and a half, these vertical dramas will tickle the fantasies of the Mills and Boon enthusiasts who would turn to Wattpad, Fanfiction, and teen romance novels for their fill. Now available in a much more palatable and accessible format, spicy romance dramas are quickly becoming a widely viewed phenomenon on social media platforms such as Instagram. Not only are Instagram channels themselves creating these vertical dramas, they are also using the platform to advertise for these spicy episodic series — teasing the audiences with reels and trailers before release, directing them to the accounts or subscriber-based vertical drama apps where they are streamed.
Forbidden high school love, arch enemies-to-lovers arcs, casanova and nerd love stories, workplace romances and every other trope that could be twisted into a romance plotline with a spicy twist, are now being produced for short-form viewing for large audiences. Bite-sized episodes to scratch the itch, and the ability to consume this content anywhere, and pretty much at any time, makes these vertical dramas a phenomenon to watch out for.
Algorithm and the Trope
Titles range from From Janitor to Mrs Billionaire, Mated to My Savage Alpha, and Revenge of the XXL Wife, to Private Lessons, Secrets of Siren, Enemies with Benefits and Loving My Brother’s Best Friend. While the titles do not leave much to imagination, this is likely by design, given the short form nature of the format, titles are as telling and provocative of the content as possible, leveraging appropriate buzzwords and themes to navigate the algorithm and land up on as many explore pages as possible.
Channels like my.fave.show, dramabox, flareflow, CandyJarTV, and others are already emerging as leaders in this genre. So much so, that not only do the shows themselves get eyeballs, the actors featuring in roles well loved by the audience are also growing as well. CandyJarTV has 993K followers on Instagram, Dramabox has 6.6 million and Flareflow has 33.9K followers on Instagram and over 10 million downloads of the app.
These streaming apps and Instagram channels are developing original stories and script ideas, sometimes even with the help of artificial intelligence, as a writer for FlareFlow shared in an interview. Popularly called ‘TV for the TikTok generation’, clickbait themes are gripping audiences across the world in the millions. A space away from streaming platforms which are increasingly priding themselves on flagship franchises and shows, exclusive access to big theatrical releases and nomination winners, and more, the vertical drama space is reclaiming the audience for otherwise ‘cringe’ and over the top storylines that deal in stormy love triangles, dialogues laden with double entendres, and overwhelming conflicts that only ever lead to the union of the leading couple.
Monetization and Opportunity
Apps tend to offer a handful of episodes for free before they require a subscription. According to reports, viewers report enjoying the tropes explored by these spicy, romantic vertical dramas, preferred largely by the BookTok community, or romantasy (romance and fantasy) literature community on social media. Viewers are particularly attracted to the cliffhangers in the episodes, clickbait titles, and the pleasantly surprising number of ‘spicy’ or sexually charged scenes that are liberally written into these shows.
The entertainment industry is primed for innovation in short form content currently. Shows and stories which may not have gotten the same number of eyeballs from a televised format or on a streaming platform for this particular genre are now being able to reach their audience through this unexpected format.
On account of the growing viewership in turn, given that film production is an expensive affair, new writers, filmmakers and actors are also getting opportunities to garner some screen experience through vertical dramas. Without exception vertical dramas have a slew of new and relatively new faces, especially in acting but across writing departments as well, who are not otherwise established actors or film and TV personalities. With its potential to pull audiences, media stalwarts and studio experts have opined that the scope for vertical dramas to grow exponentially not only in viewership, but to branch further out in terms of genres and content as well is imminent.
