Dateline Hollywood, California, Oct. 10, 2007, Coconut News Ngayon (the other CNN kuno)

The ABC Network announces today the acceptance of a Filipino-American-produced new television series. The move is an apparent "Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa" act of mollifying tens of thousands of Filipino-American activists over the "Desperate Housewives" brouhaha, which allegedly embarrassed Philippine medical schools. The new 13-part series per season will make its debut on April 1, 2008. It will be called "Desperate Housemaids."

The new series will be produced by the Dead-Poets’ Productions, a Filipino-owned firm. The company is managed by Filipino-American film buffs. It has been reported—but not confirmed yet—that experienced Filipino thespians like Bernardo Bernardo and those with Hollywood track records will take turns in directing the new series. Filipino-American actors, actresses and script writers will also be hired for this historic first Filipino-American television show to be broadcast in a mainstream television network.

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Los Angeles-based Poet-pundit Fred Burce Bunao heads a team of Filipino and Filipino-American scriptwriters. The venerable Mr. Bunao won the most-prestigious literary prize in the Philippines, the Palanca Award. He received the Palanca Award for poetry in English in 1969. He retired in the 1970s as the most-senior copy editor of the Manila Times publications.

Mr. Bunao said that the "Desperate Housemaids" will have episodes based on the true stories of Filipino and other Southeast-Asian housemaids. The producers will film scenes in Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, the Middle East and other foreign countries. He says that he is absolutely certain that the new television show will capture most of the Tony Awards’ for Best-Drama Series in 2009. Mr. Bunao said it could also win for the ABC Network even the Nobel Peace Prize if the series is able to document the exploitation of Southeast-Asian maids, generate worldwide protests and secure for them alternative gainful employment (other than being maids).

The Singapore location will film an episode inspired by the melodramatic case of Filipino housemaid, Flor Contemplacion. The Singapore government hanged Filipino Flor Contemplacion, a housemaid, on March 17, 1995. Mr. Bunao said that Filipino writer Bobby Reyes, whom he is mentoring in scriptwriting, has been commissioned to do the research on the Contemplacion Case. He said that Mr. Reyes has in fact written in the www.mabuhayradio.com an article about Ms. Contemplacion. (Editor’s Note: To read the article, please go to http://www.mabuhayradio.com/content/view/444/51/.)

The "Desperate Housemaids" chief scriptwriter said that another episode would be based on the misadventure of Dinia Baliton, a Filipino maid who fell from the five-storey apartment of her employer, Theresa Paran, who was then a Filipino diplomat attached with the Philippine Mission in Geneva. Dinia was attempting to escape from her employer when she fell. (Editor’s Note: to read more about Dinia Baliton, please go to http://www.mabuhayradio.com/content/view/457/51/.)

Mr. Bunao said that it is the hope of the "Desperate Housemaids" producers to generate the passion of the Filipino people, especially the Overseas Filipinos, to protect their woman employees. There were very few protests when Ms. Contemplacion was originally tried for double counts of murder in Singapore in 1991. The Dinia Baliton case did not also attract any wide-spread protest in American cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago, where supposed Filipino-American activists gather to demonstrate against racial bias against Filipinos at a drop of a hat.

Dead-Poets’ Productions will also employ Americans of Filipino descent who are presently connected with the ABC Network. Ms. Cheryl Burke, who is a mainstay at the ABC’s highest-rated "Dancing with the Stars," will be invited to portray the role of a Filipino child born out of wedlock and whose Black-American father abandoned her at the then Subic Bay Naval Base. Filipinos, especially Filipino Americans, have hardly moved to protect the interest of the so-called Amerasian children abandoned by American GIs, airmen or sailors who fathered them.

Mr. Bunao said that his scriptwriters are also documenting a case of a Filipino maid in Japan who was killed by her employer, a member of the Japanese crime syndicate called the Yakusa. Her body was never recovered. The show producers intend to invite Denise Dador to play the role of the said Filipino "Japayuki" in one of the series’ episodes. Ms. Dador is an ABC Channel-7 Filipino-American newscaster in Los Angeles. Mr. Bunao said that it is his hope that letting Ms. Dador, who is very popular with Filipino-American viewers, play the role of the Japayuki would generate support for the current campaign to force Japan to apologize for its World War II victims, especially the "Comfort Women" and compensate them for their war-time sufferings. (Editor’s Notes: Please read also Bobby Reyes’ article about Japan’s modern-day "Comfort Women" at this link http://www.mabuhayradio.com/content/view/447/51/.)

{ice 409 -link} Click on thumbnail  to view the photo of Fred Burce Bunao and one of his writers, Peping Domingo, who went back to his original employer, the Mindanao Mirror newspaper in Davao City, Philippines. # # #