Bayan Ko is a six-episode Filipino Government Procedural miniseries from GMA Network, created by Nessa S. Valdellon, and starring GMA regular Rocco Nacino in the lead role of Mayor Joseph Santiago, as he's sworn-in as the newly-minted mayor of the small, provincial (every)town of Lagros, in the fictional island province of Sibilan. Also stars LJ Reyes as Attorney Karen Canlas, the municipal chief-of-staff; Mercedes Cabral as Femme Fatale Eliza Bauer; and veteran actor Pen Medina as Sibilan's Provincial Governor Antonio Rubio Sr.—and his Real Life son Ping Medina as the governor's congressman son Anton, among others.
This being a series about Philippine politics, it's second nature that Joseph Santiago will run up against powerful, regressive, established political elements, in particular the Rubio dynasty, led by the corrupt, feudal patriarch that is Sibilan's governor, Antonio Rubio. His son Anton (who serves concurrently as Congressman) might not be so on board with the system into which he was born though.
Tropes included:
- Anachronism Stew: The Lagros municipal office, which still uses IBM Selectric typewriters despite that—assuming this series is set in The New '10s, since there's no real reason for it not to be—computers in some form can be had even for cheap, even with equipment overpricing as standard procedure. A few CRT-style monitors show up too but even they already feel a bit out of date. Either the office is stuck in a mini-time warp or it's really just that corrupt in there that it can't afford equipment less than a decade old.
- Antagonistic Governor: Gov. Antonio Rubio, who rules Sibilan province with the proverbial iron fist (despite his family's image as a "simple", paternalistic family caring for the provincial populace), and as part of the Philippine political establishment, is inherently at odds with Mayor Joseph's Clean Up the Town approach to governance.
- Big Bad: Governor Rubio (again).
- Big Fancy House: The Rubio mansion. It doesn't take a genius to figure out how it was paid off.
- Corrupt Bureaucrat: A downplayed example with most of Lagros' municipal employees, many of whom are forced to use government property for their own use due to various difficulties their lives and work put them in. (Some of them use the municipal hall's bathroom or kitchen, for instance, because they don't have the necessary fuel or working utilities at home.)
- Corrupt Politician: Governor Rubio (duh). The series kind of hits viewers over the head a bit on this, if only because he's shown as a counterpart to the clean (if at times naïve) politics of Mayor Joseph.
- Clean Up the Town: Mayor Joseph's whole motivation for accepting the mayorship of Lagros, in stark contrast to "the way it's always been done", represented by the corrupt/traditional Rubio dynasty.
- Disappeared Dad: Joseph's reporter dad has been dead since his adolescence.
- Egopolis: The Rubios plaster their faces all over town on trademark green tarpaulins advertising provincial-government services. It's common practice in Real Life Philippine politics, and something Mayor Joseph refuses to play by.
- Establishing Shot: Widescreen Shots of gorgeous, sunny provincial scenery that establish the feel of the province.
- Evil Old Folks: Governor Rubio, the series' primary antagonist, and its oldest major character, with his obvious silver-white hair, suggesting implicitly that he's held some kind of power in the province for decades.
- Femme Fatale: Eliza Bauer, Mayor Joseph's old high-school flame, and who's now suspected to be having an affair with Governor Rubio, despite their both being married.
- Fictional Province: Sibilan.
- First-Person Perspective: The first few scenes in the pilot are shot from Mayor Joseph's point of view, mainly to keep his identity a sort of surprise to his new constituents and municipal-hall employees (and, in a meta sense, to the viewers). Also kind of a symbol for how he's okay with relative anonymity as a public official, in contrast to the Rubios who advertise their faces everywhere.
- Government Procedural: Of a Philippine local government unit (LGU)—a small town.
- Happily Married: Mayor Joseph and his wife Nena, though they're without children yet.
- Heel–Face Turn: Congressman Anton.
- Hello, Attorney!: It's not lost on some of the ruder municipal employees that Atty. Karen Canlas, Mayor Joseph's chief-of-staff, is noticeably very young-looking, cute, and well put-together, though she quickly puts them in their place for attempted catcalling. It's little wonder Congressman Anton becomes smitten with her later in the series.
- Hereditary Republic: It's the Philippines, a clan-based society, so naturally this is part of the political landscape, in the form of the father-and-son Rubio dynasty: the father is governor of Sibilan, and the son represents it in Congress.
- Intrepid Reporter: Nena Santiago, Mayor Joseph's investigative-reporter wife.
- So was Joseph's father, Ernesto Santiago, who ended up dead when thugs on a motorbike gunned him down (a common Real Life fate, alas, in one of the world's deadliest countries for journalism in peacetime).
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: The slowness and tangle of local bureaucratic procedures is something Mayor Joseph, and his chief-of-staff Atty. Karen, come into office trying to change. The flipside of this however is that their insistence on following the rule of law—as for instance in going through proper bidding procedures—makes them look like this trope to Lagros' other government employees. After all, why go through the slowness and tangle of a bidding phase when, say, the local police already have a longstanding contract with existing uniform or equipment suppliers?
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Real-Life Relative: The Rubio dynasty is played by actual father and son Pen and Ping Medina. They even share significant family resemblance. - Real Song Theme Tune
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Joseph tries his darnedest hardest to be this as Lagros' new mayor, but it's worth noting that, with his insistence on following the rule of law, he actually comes off as unreasonable to his own employees and constituents at first, especially compared to trapos ("traditional politicians") like the Rubios, who at least act immediately when dealing out the goods—never mind the corruption they went through to deliver.
- Ruler Protagonist: Mayor Joseph, though only of a small town.
- Scenery Porn
- Thematic Theme Tune
- Titled After the Song: In this case, "Bayan Ko", a popular Protest Song during the Martial Law era in The '70s. Fittingly, it's also the series' Thematic Theme Tune.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Lagros, and the province of Sibilan in general, are fictional, and generic enough that they could fit most anywhere within the Philippines, though the Sibilan map appears to be a single island (so it's not part of, say, Luzon, the largest island). Viewers could assume though that Sibilan in general is majority Tagalog-speaking, which would place it near Luzon or other north-central Philippine islands, which rules out its being near most of the Visayan islands or Mindanao, the largest southern island.
- The real-life municipal hall of Pila, Laguna served as the setting for the Lagros municipal hall.
- White Hair, Black Heart: Governor Rubio, though his white hair's of course due to age.
