Time-travel series causes stir

A time-travelling TV comedy with a bawdy middle-aged hero has become a big hit in Japan, juxtaposing the country’s brash 1980s boom years with its more politically correct present day.

In the series Extremely Inappropriate, the past isn’t rose-tinted: there’s smoking on the bus, boobs on television and corporal punishment galore. But modern Japan doesn’t get a free pass, either.

When schoolteacher and father Ichiro Ogawa is catapulted from 1986 to 2024, he scandalises millennials and Gen Z-ers with his disregard for their views on gender, family and labour rights.

Implicit in his candid words is a question: is society today, with its good intentions around issues like diversity and worklife balance, really all it’s cracked up to be?

Last month, it became the first programme made by major broadcaster

TBS to top Netflix’s mostwatched list in Japan for three weeks running.

Producer Aki Isoyama, 56, thought it would be “challenging” to poke fun at today’s progressive values without triggering a backlash from the public.

The show isn’t meant as a verdict on the superiority of one era over the other, she told AFP. But one inspiration for her and screenwriter Kankuro Kudo, 53, was the idea that “life has become more difficult”.

“Our society has certainly gotten better, but in a way more restrictive, too, with everything dictated by compliance and protocols,” Isoyama said.

Today, when something is pronounced unacceptable, “we often unquestioningly accept that”, she added.

“The show will hopefully make viewers stop and ask why...”

Extremely Inappropriate has received its share of criticism, some saying concepts like feminism or discrimination based on appearance are oversimplified, and that political correctness is treated as little more than a shackle on free speech. –