Â鶹 debuts ‘micro-factual’ series tracing Singapore’s separation from Malaysia
The series, comprising 34 one- to three-minute clips and designed for mobile viewing, builds on Â鶹’s earlier documentary Separation: Declassified.
Â鶹’s new “micro-factual†series details how ties between Malaysian and Singaporean leaders like Lee Kuan Yew soured, leading up to the 1965 separation.
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SINGAPORE: Singapore’s 1963 merger with, and eventual separation from, Malaysia is well-trodden historical ground. But the tumultuous two years between them remain far less understood — particularly through the candid recollections of those who were in the thick of it.
To illuminate the shadowed chapter, Â鶹 has debuted a new “micro-factual†series distilled from Lee Kuan Yew and Tunku Abdul Rahman’s memoirs, nearly 10 hours of archived interviews and close to 2,000 pages of British diplomatic cables.
It is Â鶹’s first foray into micro-factual storytelling — with 34 ultra-short, bingeable episodes crafted for mobile audiences. Each episode, running just one to three minutes, delivers tightly curated “deep cuts†through vertical videos released exclusively on Â鶹’s TikTok and Â鶹 Insider’s YouTube channel.
Titled Merger To Separation, the series builds on Separation: Declassified, Â鶹’s earlier documentary on the fraught 100 days leading to Singapore’s political “divorce†from Malaysia.
WATCH EPISODE 1: Was a gentleman’s agreement broken? Singapore’s merger and separation from Malaysia (2:29)
“(The merger and separation) weren’t as clear-cut as they seemed,†Â鶹 senior editor Nicholas Oh said. “These people had real relationships and real considerations to make.â€
It is a story that Oh thought had never really been told with this level of humanity or nuance. “It’s not somebody giving commentary and kind of explaining the thought process behind (those events),†he said. “(We’re) hearing (the players’) perspectives, and there’s nothing more honest than that.â€
Series producer Dynn Othman added: “It’s not just a small handful of disagreements. It was a collection of a lot of flashpoints (that) just kept building up.â€
Both of them found the micro-factual format perfectly suited for the sprawling narrative composed of many small but consequential moments that shaped Singapore’s eventual breakaway.
And each clip is written as a stand-alone episode, easy for audiences to get into at any point, yet gripping enough to hook them and draw them deeper in the series.
“There’s no such thing as a slow build; everything is short, sharp and sweet,†Oh said.
“(You) get to the point quicker, and by the point I mean the drama to some degree,†Dynn added. “The drama is never-ending.â€
WATCH: A look at Singapore’s merger with Malaysia and the split that followed (8:27)
PIECING TOGETHER THE STORY
Scripting the series, however, proved far from straightforward. It became, in Dynn’s words, “a huge learning curve†and his “hardest project by some distanceâ€.
“(You have to) write content that has a lot of dramatic tension while also being factual,†he reflected. “You have to keep hooking … your audience.â€
For Oh, the challenge lay more in offering viewers enough contextual orientation at the start of each episode without it sounding like the series was repeating itself.
Despite the brevity of each episode, the research demanded a high level of granularity.
The team of producers worked through multiple layers of material — from newspaper reports and archival photographs to the accounts of political actors whose actions often unfolded on the periphery of public view.
The producers also had to make sense of those actions by piecing together the personal motivations and strategic manoeuvres that shaped the period.
One example is the closed-door meetings at Sri Temasek, tucked away in the Istana grounds, where People’s Action Party leaders held discreet discussions with federal opposition members. Reconstructing what happened — and how tensions between Lee and the Tunku escalated into open hostility — required rigorous perusal of archived photos and oral recounts.
WATCH EPISODE 14: Opposition parties meet in secret to oppose UMNO (1:52)
“Because everything happened in the past, you have to do a lot of (cross-checking of) sources,†Dynn said. It took him nearly 1,000 man-hours to piece together the narrative’s finer points.
Even so, both producers see this as only the beginning. They think the micro-factual format is poised to reshape how audiences engage with factual content — not by simplifying it but by meeting viewers where they already are: scrolling on their phones and consuming stories in bursts.
“(Micro-factuals are) just a lot easier to digest when you’re on the move in your busy life,†Dynn said. “You don’t have to pause in the middle of a particularly long episode and then pick it up after that. … You don't feel like you need to drop much.â€
Catch the full series on and .
WATCH SEPARATION: DECLASSIFIED PART 1: Secrets, betrayals — How Singapore’s split with Malaysia was engineered (46:59)
WATCH SEPARATION: DECLASSIFIED PART 2: How Singapore navigated high-stakes politics after split with Malaysia (46:56)
