The Guoan-themed TV series "Top Secret Competition" is being broadcast on CCTV's prime time.

After finally finding a needle in a haystack, can you lose it and get it again once it is interrupted? The Guoan police officer in the play has a line: "If we pull him out of the sea, we will have the confidence to block it in the sea again." Step by step, it is full of dangers and fog, but once again faces difficulties and fights wits and courage with the enemy. Director Liu Jiang's latest work is filmed in this situation.

The Guoan-themed TV series "Top Secret Competition" is being broadcast on CCTV's prime time. The highest ratings of China's audio-visual big data were 3.628%, the peak ratings of Cool Cloud exceeded 3, and the peak ratings of Huan.com exceeded 4. Liu Jiang has excellent works in filming the struggle and beliefs of the hidden front. In 2010, the spy war drama "Before Dawn" won multi-dimensional recognition for its ingenuity in narrative and the potential of human nature. Nowadays, it seems that veteran creators have returned to the familiar track, but in fact, the context of the narrative has fundamentally changed. If creators can use full historical energy and imaginative artistic means to reach those life-and-death and hard work, then the high degree of confidentiality and complexity of national security today frames the creative level of action and non-action, change and unchange.

How can storytellers move around and reach people's hearts in the relatively "narrow path"? Opening "Top Secret Competition", for the first time, we take protecting the safety of national nuclear power technology as the entry point, belonging to a new perspective of narrative; technical reconnaissance methods that incorporate many technological elements have created a new wonder of spy war dramas. Half of the episodes have been aired, and the more profound new and true meaning is to intertwin the sense of technology and life, and listen to the thunder in silence.

Whether to do or not reflect the connotation and extension of contemporary Guoan dramas

At the beginning of the series, Yang Guang, deputy director of the Third Department of the National Security Bureau of Yanping, discovered a secret email from a foreign spy organization during an operation, pointing to an international energy conference. During the investigation, a woman named Zhao Yawei repeatedly broke into the field of vision. As the incident escalates, various overseas forces intersect, and the unfathomable intelligence vortex has opened its mouth, threatening the country's nuclear energy resources and related technologies...

In Liu Jiang's eyes, from "Before Dawn" to "The Top Secret Competition", the first thing to do is to complete the question of the times. "In the peaceful era, the enemy and our side may not have a head-on military war, but behind it is a more intricate international situation and a more technological means of struggle. In the ever-changing contemporary society, the connotation and extension of national security themes are richer than before." Based on this understanding, the creation of new dramas has a clear way of doing things and not doing things.

On the one hand, as Liu Jiang said, "We created "The Top Secret Competition" to popularize national security knowledge, so that the public can deeply understand the importance of national security work, and at the same time pay tribute to the unknown heroes on the hidden front." Therefore, the script extracts inspiration from many real espionage cases at home and abroad targeting my country's security in recent years, and uses the personal experiences and historical materials of many national security police officers as material to restore the complexity, severity and significance of today's anti-espionage struggle as truly as possible. On the other hand, when it comes to specific technical investigation methods and external environments, limited "hiding" and moderate and reasonable artistic fiction are necessary.

In the first few episodes, the information defense battle centered on the fourth generation of nuclear power technology quickly went back and forth for several rounds. The ruthless means and tricks of spy organizations, the unswerving, wise and courageous nature of our national security workers, and the strategic position of key energy and core technologies in national security are all revealed by the plays, which is also the logical truth of the contemporary anti-espionage struggle. Going deep into the details, based on data information and key technologies, the right and evil confrontation methods are related to the espionage organization involved, and the creators choose to go hand in hand with the virtual and real.

Change and unchange, the true nature of heroes in human nature

For traditional spy war dramas with historical coordinate systems, the suspense weaving of the story along with the audio-visual experience of "explosion, gunfight, and fighting" has gradually developed a genre model that the audience loves. When innovation has long been the audience's aesthetic expectation for domestic dramas. The "Top Secret Competition" that was unchanged at this time shows that the creators have profound considerations about the essence of this type.

The difficulty of depicting the unsung heroes on the hidden front, the information warfare that uses hard-core technology and integrates into the Internet era makes the series spread out the true face of contemporary spy war while maintaining suspense tension, which is to "change according to the times." If you dig out the external hardware and means and dig deep into human nature, it is not difficult to find that Liu Jiang is still the creator who is good at talking about "people" and focuses on portraying "people".

Specifically in the play, the national security workers such as Yang Guang, Li Jian, and Tian Ziwei in the story often need to grow up in repeated battles with the enemy, go through multiple rounds, and pay a huge price to finally bring criminals to justice. After winning a battle, they had no time to celebrate, and after a little adjustment, they quickly devoted themselves to new work. Because national security and the stability of the people are always inseparable from their protection.

However, the national security protection war presented in "Top Secret Competition" may involve a wider range of issues than imagined. The plot has developed to this day, and the anti-espionage war is in full swing, and faith, struggle and sacrifice have all appeared. They are the three trump cards inherited from traditional spy wars. But those who need to hold these trump cards may not be just national security police officers. National security is based on the people and its strength lies in the people. There are no "outsiders" in safeguarding national security. Everyone has their responsibility and everyone can do it. Just like in the play, if plots such as academic conference stealing and commercial spy infiltration are still within the public's cognition; then in the latest episodes, spies disguised as writers exchange information for emotional deception, and hostile forces abroad kidnap and threaten scientific researchers with family affection, etc., also point to the infinite close distance between ordinary people's lives and national security.

Liu Jiang admitted that national security is not only a grand narrative, but also related to every citizen. For this reason, "The Top Secret Competition" is of course a tribute to the unsung hero who protects the motherland and the people, and is the true nature of a hero that stirs up silently. At the same time, it also takes national security as the topic, opens up the resonance space through human nature, and warns more viewers to tie the "first button" of national security. (Wenhui Po reporter Wang Yan)

[Editor in charge: Tang Wei]