The Little Nyonya 《小娘惹》
The much hyped blockbuster about the Peranakan culture in Southeast Asia. It's mostly about the tough life of a girl with a lowly status in a Peranakan family in Malacca and how she managed to survive and even prosper.
What is Peranakan? Generally it is a term used for the descendants of the very early Chinese immigrants to Malaya, Singapore and Indonesia and who had partially adopted the Malay culture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peranakan
I think this is the first time Mediacorp produced a Chinese series using the Peranakan culture as the background? The story is quite cliche, but the setting alone is refreshing and unique.
After watching the first episode, it felt ok. It is quite weird to hear them speaking Mandarin as the Peranakan mostly do not speak Mandarin at all, but then this is a Chinese drama... haha. The first half of episode 1 felt more like a documentary than a drama.