General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Islanders (亲密之海)

Islanders (亲密之海) is a 2025 Taiwanese romance drama television series adapted from the writer Hu Ching-fang's (胡晴舫) novel Archipelago (《群岛》), co-directed by the Singaporean director Ler Jiyuan (吕吉元) and the theater director Tsai Po-chang (蔡柏璋), and starring Christopher Lee (李铭顺), Wu Kang-ren (吴慷仁), Rima Zeidan (瑞玛席丹), and Yu Tzu-yu (于子育).¹ Its seven episodes follow the intertwined romantic and sexual relationships of four urban characters across generations, set against the rise of social media in 2010s Taiwan.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Native title	亲密之海; English title Islanders; also known as 群岛²
Source	Adapted from Hu Ching-fang's novel Archipelago (《群岛》)¹
Directors	Ler Jiyuan (吕吉元) and Tsai Po-chang (蔡柏璋); screenplay by Tsai Po-chang¹^•²
Format	7 episodes, roughly 41 to 50 minutes each; produced over four years³^•⁴
Premiere	July 18, 2025 on CATCHPLAY+ (Taiwan, Indonesia, Singapore); first two episodes screened April 13, 2025 at the Golden Horse Fantastic Film Festival¹^•²
Main cast	Christopher Lee, Wu Kang-ren, Rima Zeidan, Yu Tzu-yu, Yusuke Fukuchi⁵
Recognition	Ten nominations at the 61st Golden Bell Awards; selected for the 2025 New York Asian Film Festival³^•⁶

Spoilers

Premise

The story centers on Li Hsien-hung (李宪宏), played by Christopher Lee, a successful cultural-enterprise chairman who is married with two children, maintains a long-term affair with his business partner Hsiao-wen (晓雯, Yu Tzu-yu), and begins a passionate relationship with the much younger Lin Li-lien (林莉莲, Rima Zeidan), a free-spirited woman who keeps him at arm's length.⁵^•⁷ His personal assistant Chen Han-jung (陈汉荣, Wu Kang-ren), who has secretly loved him since their student days, waits at his side throughout.⁵^•⁴

The narrative spans 2003 to 2013. In 2003 Chen Han-jung meets his first love at school and devotes himself to Li Hsien-hung; a decade later Li has shifted his business focus and drifted from his earlier ideals. In 2013 Taiwan faces sharp social division, and generational rifts, amplified by social media, drive a new wave of conflict.² A dinner-table remark by Li triggers a generational dispute and a social-media pile-on that costs him his standing, and he must maneuver public opinion to regain his voice while facing a major business decision and escalating conflicts among lovers and family.⁵

The title's "sea" stands for the distance between people: each person is an island, watching the others but unable to truly connect, a condition the series treats as intensified by the internet.⁴ The production describes the show as exploring struggles among desire, love, loneliness, and control through four characters' different emotional needs.⁷

Cast and characters

Christopher Lee (李铭顺) as Li Hsien-hung, 50, chairman of a cultural-enterprise group, outwardly calm and self-possessed but tormented by desires he cannot control; he holds a wife and a girlfriend at the same time.⁶
Wu Kang-ren (吴慷仁) as Chen Han-jung (阿荣), Li's assistant, who has loved him since school and later becomes his closest aide.⁴^•¹⁰
Rima Zeidan (瑞玛席丹) as Lin Li-lien, glamorous on Facebook yet lonely, drifting in and out of intimacy, a figure the synopsis calls a portrait of the younger generation.²
Yu Tzu-yu (于子育) as Hsiao-wen, Li's general manager and long-term lover; in the finale, after 25 years of quiet devotion, she ends the relationship by telling him "I don't love you anymore."¹³
Yusuke Fukuchi (福地祐介) as Shih-chieh (世杰), the university senior Li-lien admires, whose reunion with her inflames Li's jealousy.⁵

The supporting cast includes Tsai Ken-yen (蔡亘晏) as news anchor Hung Li-fang, Lee Chih-cheng (李至正), Lee Shao-chieh (李劭婕), Hu Wei-chieh (胡玮杰), Huang Hsiang-ting (黄湘婷), and Chang Chia-lun (张家伦) as Tsung-te, a classmate of Li-lien.⁵^•⁹

Production

The adaptation originated with producer and screenwriter Wu Tsung-yu (吴宗祐), who raised the idea with Hu Ching-fang when she was chairperson of the Taiwan Creative Content Agency promoting diversification of literary IP.⁸ The series was produced by CATCHPLAY's Innersync Films (影响原创影视) with co-production credit to Hsin Hsi Enterprise (鑫囍创业), and took four years to make, with location shooting in Taipei, Hualien, New York, and Alaska.¹^•⁴

For Tsai Po-chang, a theater director, the series was his first experience directing for the screen; Hu Ching-fang herself makes a small cameo appearance.⁹ Lee and Wu were Wu Tsung-yu's first choices for their roles at the script stage.¹⁰

The series is explicit by Taiwanese television standards. The main poster shows the four leads bare-chested in one bed under the tagline "when happiness and desire cannot be told apart," and Zeidan called it the most explicit work of her career; Lee said the script was the most charged with erotic tension he had encountered, and Yu Tzu-yu called it the hardest shoot of her acting life.¹¹^•¹ A review on the UDN reading site described it as a contemporary fable that pairs unusually bold erotic depiction with a repressed interior life, weaving an intricate web of relationships, cold social-media opinion, and themes of exile and generational difference.¹²

Release and reception

The first two episodes premiered at the Golden Horse Fantastic Film Festival on April 13, 2025, where screenings sold out and positive word of mouth spread online.²^•¹ The full series began streaming on July 18, 2025 on CATCHPLAY+ in Taiwan, Indonesia, and Singapore, with weekly Friday releases, and was also carried by LINE TV, Hong Kong's Now TV, and Amazon Prime Video.¹^•³^•¹³ It was the second Taiwanese series to appear on Amazon Prime Video, after The World Between Us II (《我们与恶的距离II》).⁹

The series was selected for the 2025 New York Asian Film Festival, which the magazine Marie Claire described as the first and only Taiwanese series chosen in the festival's 24-year history, and it entered Netflix's Top 10 in Taiwan.⁶ It received ten nominations at the 61st Golden Bell Awards.³ The finale's storyline, in which Wu Kang-ren's character, unable to have the love he wants, visits a gay sauna, and Yu Tzu-yu's character renounces her 25-year devotion, drew wide discussion of women's emotional situations on social media.¹³ A Lianhe Zaobao reader review praised Wu Kang-ren's layered portrayal of Chen Han-jung's inner world, singling out his confrontation scene with Rima Zeidan in episode 4.¹⁴ Reviewers noted the series' slow pace and absence of conventional dramatic climaxes, suited to viewers willing to watch attentively.⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › Hong Kong and Taiwanese serial drama

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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