A new kind of TV drama has just landed in China’s prime-time lineup.

On August 31, the Chinese AIGC series The New Journey to the West premiered during prime time on Hunan Satellite TV.

The series has 30 episodes, each around 40 minutes long.

Its characters, settings and much of its footage were generated with AI.

It draws on Journey to the West, one of China’s best-known classical stories, but tells an entirely new story.

For viewers unfamiliar with it, think of it as a long-form adventure series built around characters and a fantasy world from a classic Chinese legend.

And this time, there are no actors, no studio sets and no conventional location shoots.

Mango TV used AI to create digital assets for 109 characters and 143 settings, while a production team of nearly 100 people handled the script, storyboarding, prompts and post-production.

The entire project went from development to broadcast in just over three months.

The production team says each episode cost around 900,000 yuan — less than one-tenth the cost of comparable traditional animated series.

The director also gave one striking example.

A three-minute action sequence that would previously have cost four to five million yuan to produce was completed for just 20,000 to 30,000 yuan.

And the producers did not test the series on TikTok or other short-video platforms.

They sent it straight into prime time on Hunan Satellite TV.

For a television series, that is a demanding place to compete.

It has to clear regulatory requirements, meet audience expectations and attract advertisers.

And The New Journey to the West made an immediate impact, ranking first among provincial satellite channels in its time slot on its premiere night.

There is also a notable change in how the AI is being used.

In the past, AI-generated video often involved a lot of trial and error: generate an image, see what comes out, and try again.

But The New Journey to the West was made using Mango TV’s own “Mango Lingchuang” platform, which allows the director to control things such as camera position, focal length, depth of field and camera movement.

The 109 character assets and 143 setting assets can also be reused.

The show’s director, Li Dongshen, has said that AIGC has “broken through the barriers” of traditional film and television production.

Whether that claim holds up is still being debated.

But for now, one thing is clear.

AI-generated long-form content is no longer confined to experiments and short videos.

At least in China, it has made its way onto one of the most mainstream stages in television: prime time.