U.S. network TV takes a rare prime time look at Thailand, with Thai guest actors

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

 

The other night on U.S. TV network CBS, one of their popular primetime drama series called "SWAT" -- about a police Special Weapons and Tactics team based in Los Angeles -- had its Season 6 premier.... And to my surprise, it happened to be filmed and set largely in Thailand (scenes in Bangkok and then somewhere in the North AFAICT), and included a lot of supporting Thai actors and one with a Myanmar type name.

 

The episode is called "Thai Hard" and involves the head of the SWAT team (actor Shemar Moore) getting captured along with an ex-military buddy while on a police training trip to Thailand by a Myanmar drug kingpin. From the way the episode ended, it looks like the next week's episode #2 and maybe more likely also will be set in Thailand. -- which is something of a rarity for U.S. primetime TV series.

 

 

Here's a list of some of the Thai actors who got guest credits on the episode:

 

Pasakorn Hoyhon - Thet

Nay Myo Thant - Zaw Min

Kanticha Chumma - Chintana

Nut Devahastin - Somchai

Pattarasuda Anuman - May

Sahajak Boonthanakit - Commander Niran

 

https://swatcbs.fandom.com/wiki/Thai_Hard

 

https://www.tvinsider.com/gallery/swat-season-6-premiere-photos-thai-hard/#11

 

A couple of things that struck me as being peculiar/funny about the episode.... though perhaps to be expected.

 

--All the Asian characters guesting on the show -- including a Thai police SWAT commander and two younger officers under him, spoke excellent English, as did the Myanmar drug kingpin character out in the Thai-Myanmar border boonies...  How often do you run into real Thai police here who speak English like natives (yes, I'm sure there are "some", somewhere)?

 

--The Thai SWAT team commander talks early in the show about planning to come to Los Angeles soon because, he says, his older daughter will soon graduate from the private and pricey Pepperdine University in Malibu... And the school's website says its total annual expenses undergrad students should expect are between $70,000 and $85,000.... Perhaps the Thai SWAT commander character is just one of those "unusually wealthy" civil servant types...

 

And then there's the younger female Thai SWAT officer who seems to have been assigned as a kind of local tour guide for the Los Angeles SWAT officers while in BKK. Her character, in perfect English, talks about having liked to read Sherlock Holmes stories when she was younger.... Dunno, but is Sherlock Holmes popular reading about the Thai female police officer corps???

 

Anyway, it was fun to see Thailand and Thai actors get some time/exposure on a U.S. network primetime TV series.... and not as hookers or exploited immigrant laborers....

 

Edited October 9, 2022 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Here's a teaser video on the episode and the actors/production staff talking about filming in Thailand:

 

https://www.tvinsider.com/1063811/swat-season-6-premiere-shemar-moore-cast-filming-thailand-preview/

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

The drug kingpin character on the episode, Zaw Min, is played by actor Nay Myo Thant.

 

I'm not sure exactly who that actor is... except.... one of the founders of the Thai rap group Thaitanium has the same name, so I'm wondering if it might not be the same person.

 

Here's a YT clip of that part of the show, with the Zaw Min character showing up at about the 2 minute, 30 second mark of this clip:

 

 

 

[thaibeachlovers]

20 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

How often do you run into real Thai police here who speak English like natives (yes, I'm sure there are "some", somewhere)?

I've met a few that spoke excellent English.

[thaibeachlovers]

20 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

And to my surprise, it happened to be filmed and set largely in Thailand (scenes in Bangkok

Did they have the obligatory, but rather tame, scene set in a gogo bar?

Every western movie set in LOS I've ever seen had at least one. I recognised the bars sometimes.

Even Auf Wiedersehen Pet had at least one in the special they made in LOS.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

5 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Did they have the obligatory, but rather tame, scene set in a gogo bar?

Every western movie set in LOS I've ever seen had at least one. I recognised the bars sometimes.

Even Auf Wiedersehen Pet had at least one in the special they made in LOS.

 

FWIW, refreshingly, I don't recall any Thai gogo bars or bar girls surfacing in any shape or form in this particular episode.

 

There was a relatively brief segment during the opening part of the episode that had a street scene in Bangkok where the L.A. and Thai police were training together (no bars or girls). And then most of the rest of the Thailand portions of the episode were out in the boonies.

 

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