THE BARBIE FORTEZA-David Licauco series “Maging Sino Ka Man” has ended last Friday. It ran for less than two months and it’s common knowledge that it failed to make a dent at the higher ratings of Coco Martin’s “Batang Quiapo”.
Too bad since the tandem’s “Maria Clara at Ibarra” then helped in retiring Coco’s “Ang Probinsyano”.
Take note that “Maria Clara” is an original show, unlike “Maging Sino Ka Man” which is an adaptation of a blockbuster 1991 movie.
We’re really wondering why GMA chose this as their follow up project for Barbie and David, when the same title and the theme song had already been used by ABS-CBN in 2006 with John Lloyd Cruz and Bea Alonzo.
We felt that the Barbie-David love team deserves an original material like their Klay-Fidel characters in “Maria Clara at Ibarra” that captured the hearts of viewers even if it’s already common knowledge that Barbie already has a real life boyfriend, Jak Roberto.
To begin with, the characters they played in “Maging Sino” didn’t fit Barbie and David well.
At this day and age, Barbie is pretending to be a boy named Dino, something that is very 50s when “Jack en Jill” hit it big with Lolita Rodriguez pretending to be a boy to Dolphy’s pretending to be a girl.
As for David, his role as Carding, a sanggano-bad boy type just doesn’t suit him.
It fits Robin Padilla well, but for David, sadyang hindi bagay.
He is best playing a Korean type of executive, looking dapper and dashing in classy suits and exuding a suplado image.
As one of our helpers said: “Si David, di bagay na bad boy. Mas bagay siyang bebe boy.”
And he just lacks the “angas” the role calls for. Sana, hindi nasayang ang success ng Klay-Fidel love team with Dino-Carding not doing well.
And while we’re at it, we hope that GMA will take note that their original materials rate higher than their remakes.
Like “Maria Clara at Ibarra”, their recent original shows like “Abot Kamay na Pangarap”, “Prima Donnas”, “First Yaya”, “Lolong”, “Royal Blood”, to name a few, that all did well.
In contrast, their recent remakes like “Descendants of the Sun”, “Start Up”, “Underage”, “Voltes V” (for which they spent so much) didn’t do as well as expected.
So maybe, they should better just come up with more original concepts and stop doing remakes or adaptations for a while.
Leave it to Coco to make remakes of old FPJ movies.
But actually, Coco doesn’t really do remakes. He just uses the titles of FPJ flicks for nostalgic appeal and then he comes up with totally different stories.
The truth is that reliance on remakes stifles creativity and helps prevent the cultivation of more original story telling.
We believe networks should really prioritize developing new and fresh ideas, rather than merely relying on successful shows or movies of eras that have gone by and are no longer familiar to the Gen Z audiences that dominate the demography of most viewers today.