What Happened
Taiwan · IP Adaptation · Cultural Policy · Publishing · Television · East Asia · Adaptation Reportseries of 14 Aug 2026 · record to 18 Sep 2026
One text, five years · and the institutions in between
From Novel to Screen in 1,813 Days
Beck's novel 無線人生 reached bookshops in August 2021 and the screen in August 2026, as Connecting to You, finishing its run in September. 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 series' first episode
- 53 / 425texts selected from entries in the state adaptation shortlist's 2021 cycle
- 10Taiwanese titles pitched at Busan Story Market in October 2022, this novel among them
- 18series projects Golden Horse selected in September 2023, this among them
- 12 + 1episodes, plus a bonus episode a week after the finale
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. |
| 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. | The production's own release, published on TAVIS.tw, which the Ministry of Culture's Bureau of Audiovisual and Music Industry Development runs. |
| 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. Tickets went on sale on 29 March and sold out at once. | The festival's programme entry; CTWANT on the sell-out. |
| Confirmed | In the festival's final audience ranking, updated to its last day, 19 April, the series placed third — behind two participatory event screenings, 小姐好白 and 洛基恐怖秀. | The festival's own published ranking. |
| Confirmed | Streaming began on 14 August 2026 with four episodes, then two every Friday, across GagaOOLala, iQIYI, Viki, Japan's Rakuten TV, MyVideo, friDay and the series' own YouTube channel. Episodes 11 and 12, billed as the finale, came on 11 September; a bonus thirteenth episode followed on 18 September. | The publisher's news item; the platform's own episode list; the broadcast-night discussion threads on PTT. |
| 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 a TAICCA shortlist, as its publisher and the director both say. The year rests on two published facts: the novel is absent from the 2022 list, which its publisher itemises, and the 2021 cycle's submission window opened eleven days before the novel appeared and closed 26 days after. The agency's own announcement page could not be opened from here. | 銘報's report of the announcement; the publisher's news item; the publisher's itemised 2022 list. |
| 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 2021 adaptation shortlist: 53 texts from 425 entries, the cycle this novel fits. A publisher whose shortlisted text is then licensed can claim a fixed NT$200,000 grant, and a buyer who signs a screenwriter, another NT$200,000.
- 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 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.
- 12 Mar 2026The Golden Horse Fantastic Film Festival announces the series as one of two Taiwanese series having their world premiere there.
- 22 Mar 2026At the festival's selection guide, its executive director 聞天祥 introduces the series: twenty-minute episodes, “so we are showing four at once”.
- 29 Mar 2026Festival 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.
- 19 Apr 2026The festival closes. Its final audience ranking places the series third overall.
- 14 Aug 2026Streaming begins across seven platforms, four episodes at once, then two every Friday. 1,813 days after the novel appeared.
- 11 Sep 2026Episodes 11 and 12 are released as the finale, four weeks after the first.
- 18 Sep 2026A bonus thirteenth episode is released, set some months into the couple's relationship as they prepare to move into a new home.
What has no date Two 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 Busan pitch, the Golden Horse selection, the wrap, the premiere and every broadcast date 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. Now that the run has ended, nothing else in the chain is undated.
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 writes for the screen herself, and the film-makers say they asked her view before development began. What was given up is on the record, and most changes have a reason attached. 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.” The finished run does that literally: the ability grows, fails and returns — by the seventh episode he can feel what a line carries by touching it, in the tenth he loses the sight, in the eleventh it comes back.
- 4colours given fixed meanings, so an audience could follow them
- 1premise invented for the screen: the student lodges with the officer
- 3renderings of the same line: light, flat arrows, woven cord
What changed between the page and the screen Four changes, and the reason given where one was
| 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 film-makers' words. |
| Beck imagined the connections as threads giving off light of different colours. | Built as three-dimensional cords with a woven texture, added in post-production. 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 stay and lodges with the officer, so their lives actually overlap. | To give the two more real contact in each other's lives. |
| 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 the screen.
- Scored not by a jury of critics but by a circle of production buyers, over about two months.
- 425 entries and 53 selected in the 2021 cycle; 383 and 54 the year after.
- Selection is worth money at two later steps: NT$200,000 to the publisher once a licence is signed, and NT$200,000 more once a buyer signs a screenwriter.
Oct 2022
The rights market
- Taiwan was a theme country of the strand that year, alongside Korea, Japan and Southeast Asian countries.
- 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 had reached the screen, so the forum's record is published rather than asserted.
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 entry 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, closed the Kaohsiung Film Festival in 2023. This is his first series. The scripts are credited to 溫慧明 and 牧星. The production company is 好勁影業, and the co-presenting parties 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. The episodes are short: the festival's director introduced them as twenty minutes each, “so we are showing four at once”, and the festival printed its four-episode block at 93 minutes. The streaming platform lists the same four at 108, and the whole twelve at 315 minutes; no source explains the difference between the two counts of the opening block.
Most episodes are named after a way of misreading someone This page'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, twelve of the thirteen titles are the name of a concept from psychology or its popular vocabulary: the gain–loss effect, Murphy's law, the illusion of transparency, interpersonal distance, the mere-exposure effect, the suspension-bridge effect, self-deprecation, reaction formation, conditioning, the self-fulfilling prophecy, the Zeigarnik effect and, for the bonus episode, the scarcity principle. The finale's title, “rewriting the life script”, is a phrase rather than a named effect, and Murphy's law is an adage rather than a finding. No publicity material found says the pattern is deliberate. It is worth noting anyway, because it lands 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 — a precise description of the trouble with a show about feelings you can see. And the Zeigarnik effect, that unfinished business stays in the mind, names the episode in which the two discover where their line began.
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. About four months to a state shortlist, nine and a half more to an international rights market, eleven to a pitching forum, nineteen and a half to a finished shoot, and sixteen more to broadcast — after which the whole run took four weeks. A reader who imagines adaptation as a deal followed by a production has the shape wrong: much 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. All three are documented, and the shortlist is designed to pay out at the very steps that follow it — a licence, then a screenwriter. What is not documented is a link between the three appearances in this case. 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 open about what it cut
Four changes, reasons given for most of them, 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 shared home was invented so a camera could film what the book kept in the protagonist's head; 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 read the book, which is the argument for adapting rather than replacing.
What this case cannot show Hold these loosely
- Whether the schemes work, in any general sense. This is one text of 53 on one year's shortlist, and one 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.
- Whether the pattern in the episode titles is deliberate. It is this page's reading of a platform listing, not a claim by anyone who made the series. A word from the writers' room would settle it.
- Why the opening block has two lengths. The festival printed 93 minutes for four episodes and the platform lists 108. No source says why, and a guess is not put here.
What could not be verified
Unconfirmed report — that the series won the festival's audience award: a badge on one streaming platform's listing. The festival's own final ranking places it third, and presents a ranking rather than an award.
Unconfirmed report — that Beck has herself been a Golden Bell nominee: her publisher and the production's release both say so. The official list for 2020 shows four nominations for her work and none in her name.
Unconfirmed report — that this was the first BL series the Golden Horse forum selected: the production's own wrap release. The forum's announcement does not say so.