The purpose of this paper is to find out what social values and some common morals are in the historic television drama. The study examines two most frequently represented television series, "Pao Chin-tien" and "Liu Po-wen." Both series have involved Chinese historic figures, but the plots are fictional. The study revealed that the two drama series held a common moral of respecting leaders in political offices and followed an optimistic social attitude. It seemed that historic television series aimed at reinforcing social values rather than encouraging any revolutionary thoughts.
Emest Bormann uses symbolic convergence theory to explain how symbolic reality influences beliefs in social reality. Current historic television series neglect contemporary social aspects such as science, democracy, equal rights, and independence. Such a phenomenon, which might decay social change due to the media ’s uses of symbolic reality, is an issue worthy of further observation and discussion.