What Happened
Taiwan · IP Adaptation · Cultural Policy · Publishing · Television · Adaptation Reportseries of 14 Aug 2026 · record to 29 Aug 2026
One text, five years · and the institutions in between
From Novel to Screen in 1,813 Days
Beck's 無線人生 (provisional: Wireless Life) reached bookshops in August 2021 and the screen in August 2026, as Connecting to You. In between sat a state adaptation shortlist, a Korean rights market and a film-festival pitching forum — and at the end, a version of the story whose rules had been rewritten, on the record and for stated reasons, so that a camera could show them.
The figures Each traced to a dated page from the body that published it
- 1,813days from the novel's publication to the drama's first episode
- 53 / 425texts selected by TAICCA's 2021 adaptation shortlist, which this novel was on
- 10Taiwanese titles pitched at Busan Story Market in Oct 2022, this novel among them
- 18series projects Golden Horse selected in Sep 2023, this among them
- 4fixed meanings the series gave its coloured lines, where the novel left them open
The record, graded Standing first, and the rows sorted by it
| Standing | What | Where it is on record |
|---|---|---|
| Confirmed | The novel 無線人生 was published by 鏡文學 (Mirror Fiction) on 27 August 2021. | The publisher's own catalogue entry, dated 17 August 2021. |
| Confirmed | Taiwan pitched ten original titles at Busan Story Market on 8 October 2022, this novel among them, with the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) as a theme-country partner under a memorandum signed with the market that day. | TAICCA's own release, which itemises all ten. |
| Confirmed | On 1 September 2023 the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival Executive Committee named 18 selected series projects, this among them, described as blending “BL romance, fantasy and light detection.” | The committee's own announcement. |
| Confirmed | The shoot wrapped, announced on 17 April 2025. The production credit names 文化內容策進院 — TAICCA — among the parties presenting the finished series, alongside 合影視, 瀚草文創, 高雄人, 好勁影業 and 好靚仔娛樂. | TAVIS.tw, run by the Ministry of Culture's Bureau of Audiovisual and Music Industry Development. |
| Confirmed | Episodes 1–4 had their world premiere at the Golden Horse Fantastic Film Festival on 11 April 2026, screened as a 93-minute block. Festival tickets went on sale on 29 March and sold out at once. | The festival's own programme entry; CTWANT's report of the sell-out. |
| Confirmed | Streaming began on 14 August 2026 with four episodes at once, then two every Friday, across GagaOOLala, iQIYI, Viki, Japan's Rakuten TV, MyVideo, friDay and the series' own YouTube channel. Eight episodes had been released by 28 August. | The publisher's news item; the release state read from friDay's own listing. |
| Confirmed | Beck's earlier television film 住戶公約第一條 took four nominations at the 55th Golden Bell Awards in 2020: television film, supporting actress, most promising newcomer and cinematography. Screenwriting was not among them. | CNA's full published list of nominees and winners. |
| Confirmed, not verifiable here | TAICCA's 2021 adaptation shortlist, announced on 22 December 2021, took 53 texts from 425 entries, and this novel was on it. The agency's own announcement page could not be opened from here; the year is corroborated by the novel's absence from the following year's list, which its publisher itemises in full. | Search extracts of the agency's announcement; the publisher's itemised 2022 list. |
| Unconfirmed | How many episodes the series runs to. Listings give both 12 and 13, and the run had not ended at the time of writing. | Two platform and database listings, which disagree. |
| Unconfirmed | That the series holds a final audience award from the festival. One streaming platform's listing carries such a badge; the festival's own account records the series topping the audience-vote ranking on 14 April, mid-festival, which is a daily standing rather than a final award. | A platform badge against the festival's own dated post. |
| Not public | The date the adaptation rights were signed. The year, 2022, is on the publisher's record; no month or day was published. | The publisher's news item gives the year only. |
Timeline
Publication to broadcast Every dated step, in the order it happened
- 27 Aug 2021鏡文學 publishes Beck's novel 無線人生. Its jacket names her as the author of a television film that took four Golden Bell nominations the year before.
- 22 Dec 2021TAICCA announces its adaptation shortlist for the year: 53 texts from 425 entries, this novel among them. Selected texts become eligible for a licensing grant.
- 8 Oct 2022Taiwan is a theme country of Busan Story Market. TAICCA signs a memorandum with the market and runs a Taiwan pitch session for ten titles, this novel among them.
- 2022好勁影業 signs the adaptation rights with 鏡文學. Its director says he found the story on the state shortlist. No month was published for the signing.
- 1 Sep 2023Golden Horse names 18 selected series projects for its pitching conference, this among them. The conference itself runs 20–22 November.
- 17 Apr 2025The shoot wraps. The announcement carries the full production credit, in which TAICCA appears as a co-presenting party.
- 2025南綠's manga edition of the novel appears. No month was published.
- 29 Mar 2026Golden Horse Fantastic Film Festival tickets go on sale and the screening sells out at once.
- 11 Apr 2026World premiere of episodes 1–4, in a 93-minute block, during the festival's 10–19 April run. Cast and crew attend a post-screening session.
- 14 Apr 2026The festival's own account posts that the series has returned to the top of its audience-vote ranking, with the festival half run.
- 14 Aug 2026Streaming begins across seven platforms, four episodes at once, then two every Friday. 1,813 days after the novel appeared.
- 28 Aug 2026The eighth episode is released. The run has not ended, and listings disagree on how many episodes there will be.
What has no date Three things in this chain were never given one
The best-evidenced step in this sequence is the first one, and the least-evidenced sits in the middle. The novel's publication, the shortlist, the Busan pitch, the Golden Horse selection, the wrap, the premiere and the broadcast each carry a dated page from the body responsible. The rights signing does not. It is the hinge the whole chain turns on — without it there is no production — and it is recorded as a bare year on the publisher's word. The manga edition is dated the same way. And the third undated thing lies ahead rather than behind: the series had not finished airing when this was written, so the length of the finished work is not yet a fact.
The Argument
An adaptation is a new work The people who made it say so, and say what it cost
The clearest statement of the argument comes from the novelist rather than the film-makers. “To me, an adaptation is an entirely new work, and something will always have to be given up,” Beck told 鏡文學. “I only hope the series carries the spirit and register of the original: a warm, bright story that happens to ordinary people.” She is a screenwriter herself, and the film-makers say they asked her position before development began. What was given up is on the record, and every change has a reason attached to it. Director 游智涵 (YU Jhi-han) says BL drama is often too manga-like — characters settle what they are to each other almost at once, skipping the part where two people find each other out — and that he wanted the connection between the student and the officer to deepen episode by episode instead. Producer 侯帥安 gives the writers' room's governing question: even if the protagonist can see a line, does he understand what it means? “He will have his own misreadings of a relationship,” 侯 says. “We wanted each episode to let him evolve, and understand the meaning behind these connections.” That is a theme the novel could hold in interior monologue and a camera cannot, which is why the adaptation had to give it somewhere to happen.
- 4colours given fixed meanings, so an audience could follow them
- 1premise invented for the screen: the two leads share a flat
- 3renderings of the same line: light, flat arrows, woven cord
What changed between the page and the screen Four changes, each with the reason its makers gave
| In the novel | On screen | The reason given |
|---|---|---|
| Lines come in many colours and their meanings are not sharply drawn — love, family, friendship, or simply caring about a thing. | Four fixed meanings: red for love, yellow for friendship, green for family, blue for hostility. | So that viewers could follow it, in the producers' words. |
| Beck imagined the connections as threads giving off light of different colours. | Built as three-dimensional cords with a woven texture. 南綠's manga edition had drawn them as flat, directional arrows. | Not stated as such; each medium rendered the same idea in what it could show. |
| Only the protagonist sees the lines, so much of what he feels for the officer stays inside his own head. | A new premise: the student needs somewhere to live and moves in with the officer, so their lives actually overlap. | Interiority does not survive a camera; the two needed real, repeated contact for the feeling to be shown at all. |
| The leads are named 張亦賢 and 黃士弘. | Renamed 林佳凱 and 吳大緯, played by 邱以太 and 劉育仁. | None published. |
What Others Add
Three doors, one agency The gates a Taiwanese text passes, and who holds them
Dec 2021
The adaptation shortlist
- Open submission; publishers enter texts licensable for screen adaptation.
- Scored not by a jury of critics but by a circle of production buyers, over about two months.
- 425 entries, 53 selected in the 2021 cycle; 383 and 54 the year after.
- Selection carries eligibility for a licensing grant — money attached to the text, not to a production.
Oct 2022
The rights market
- Taiwan was a theme country of the strand that year, alongside Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia.
- TAICCA signed a memorandum with the market on the day it opened, covering publishing-to-screen translation, training and co-investment.
- Ten Taiwanese titles were pitched to international producers in a Taiwan session; two of the ten were 鏡文學's, this novel one of them.
Sep 2023
The pitching forum
- Its Series strand was in its fourth year; 18 projects were selected for the November conference.
- The committee's own announcement lists earlier selections that reached the screen, so the forum's record is published rather than asserted.
- Reported as the first BL series project the forum had selected.
Who made it A first series, from a director with a festival record
游智涵 is a writer, director and editor whose record is in short work and festivals rather than television. Golden Horse's own programme note sets it out: 百獄 took best student film and a directing prize at the 金穗獎 in 2008; the 2018 short 癡情馬殺雞 was selected by the San Francisco and Los Angeles LGBT film festivals; and his first feature, 壞男孩 (The Young Hoodlum), closed the Kaohsiung Film Festival in 2023. Connecting to You is his first series. The production company is 好勁影業; the co-presenting parties named on the wrap announcement are 合影視, 瀚草文創, 高雄人, 文化內容策進院, 好勁影業 and 好靚仔娛樂. 邱以太 plays the student and 劉育仁 the officer, with 大鶴（林鶴軒）and 杜苡妮 in support; 劉育仁 has said he took the part partly because his own father is a police officer. Twelve months separated the wrap from the festival premiere and sixteen from broadcast — a long post-production, and one consistent with a show whose central effect has to be added to every scene it appears in.
Every episode is named after a way of misreading someone This report's own reading, from the platform's episode list
This is an inference, not something any source states. Read off the episode list on one of the streaming platforms, every episode released so far carries the name of a documented effect in perception or social psychology: the gain–loss effect, Murphy's law, the illusion of transparency, interpersonal distance, the mere-exposure effect, the suspension-bridge effect, self-deprecation. No publicity material found says the pattern is deliberate, and it is possible that it is not. It is worth noting anyway, because it lands exactly where the producer said the writers were aiming. The illusion of transparency is the belief that one's inner state is plainer to other people than it really is — which is a precise description of the trouble with a show about feelings you can see. And the suspension-bridge effect is the finding that arousal from one cause gets attributed to another, which is what a romance built out of shared danger runs on.
Conclusion
What the five years actually contained Three findings, and the limit on each
The interval is the finding
1,813 days from a novel on a shelf to an episode on a screen, and none of it idle. Four months to a state shortlist, ten more to an international rights market, another eleven to a pitching forum, nineteen to a finished shoot, sixteen more to broadcast. A reader who imagines adaptation as a deal followed by a production has the shape wrong: most of this interval was spent making the text findable by people who buy things, before anybody had bought anything.
One agency appears three times
TAICCA shortlisted the text in 2021, carried it to Busan in 2022, and is named among the parties presenting the finished series in 2025 — the last of those from a government site publishing the production's own credit list. All three are documented. What is not documented is a link between them. Nothing found says the shortlisting led to the investment, and both could as easily follow from the same judgement about the same property. The three appearances are the fact; a causal chain through them is not.
The adaptation is honest about what it cut
Four changes, four stated reasons, and the author's own position that an adaptation is a new work with losses built in. The colour code was fixed so an audience could follow it; the cohabitation was invented because a camera cannot film an interior monologue; the lines were rebuilt in three dimensions. What went is the novel's ambiguity about what a feeling is worth — and a reader who wants that back can still buy the book, which is the argument for adapting rather than replacing.
What this case cannot show Hold these loosely, and watch for what would settle them
- Whether the schemes work, in any general sense. This is one text out of 53 on one year's shortlist, and one out of ten pitched at Busan. The outcome of the other nine was not traced, and could not honestly be: showing that a title was not adapted means proving a negative from an absence of news. Nothing here implies a success rate.
- How long the finished series is. Listings give 12 episodes and 13, and eight had appeared by 28 August. The schedule — four at launch, two each Friday — lands on 12 by 11 September. The finale settles it.
- Whether the festival gave it a final audience award. A platform listing says so; the festival's own record shows a mid-festival daily ranking. A published closing announcement would settle it either way.
- Whether the pattern in the episode titles is deliberate. It is this report's reading of a platform listing, not a claim by anyone who made the series. A word from the writers' room would settle it.