The TVB network program, which has just ended its monthlong run, was shown as the city’s leadership struggled to confront the latest supposed peril attributed to mainlanders: a shortage of baby formula said to have been caused by the hoarding of supplies by mainland Chinese who have crossed the border into Hong Kong (apparently out of fear of tainted supplies in China).

Some Hong Kong residents have become so agitated about the formula milk problem that they have asked the United States to intervene, using a petition on the White House Web site titled, “Baby Hunger Outbreak in Hong Kong, International Aid Requested.”

The petition, created in late January, has already drawn 23,000 signatures.

The show’s candid depictions of mainland-Hong Kong relations — one scene focuses on the formula shortage — have drawn hundreds of complaints to Hong Kong regulators from viewers upset at things like its portrayals of mainlanders and its depiction of the Hong Kong’s tourism industry as predatory. And Chinese officials censored trailers for the program on the mainland, where it could be viewed on TVB’s overseas channel or through video streaming.

China also did some trimming of the version shown on the mainland, once the program began there. It deleted a depiction of a protest outside a Hong Kong clothing store, a scene apparently based on a demonstration against a Dolce & Gabbana store that let free-spending mainlanders photograph merchandise while barring Hong Kong residents from doing the same.

Still, the show clearly struck a nerve, becoming the TVB channel’s highest-rated drama this year.

To some, the tensions captured in the show are a natural outgrowth of fears about Beijing’s increasing influence in Hong Kong, a former British colony that retained considerable legal autonomy and civil rights after it was handed back to China in 1997.