TVB - Steps (舞動全城 )

I know I said I was going to write part 2 of my afterthoughts on my trip to Beijing but that'll have to wait as I now feel like writing a comment on the latest TVB series that I'm currently watching.

As usual, I won't go into details with the sypnosis of the series as you can read about it here in English and here in Chinese.

I must say that this really isn't a very good series at all and if I ever wondered just how little tolerance I have for fluffy romances, I think I've no doubts now that I have very little tolerance for TVB series that are light on drama and story. This series seems like a vehicle to promote the younger TVB fadans and I guess qualifies more like a typical idol series packed full of good looking people and virtually no story.


Bernice Liu dancing, unfortunately, the story is less about dancing and more about herbal tea... grrrr.

The series did start of well enough and I enjoyed the first two episodes and the series did setup most of the relationships and the potential conflicts well and I was genuinely interested in how some of it was going to play out. The English title isn't very elegant but unlike many of TVB's English title, this title actually makes some sense, although sadly not much else makes sense in this series. The series' Chinese title "舞動全城" can be loosely translated as "the whole city dances", hence "steps", as in dance steps. The opening MTV sequence is also entirely about dance, so forgive me if I sound somewhat annoyed when I say that the series is more about $&%*#@&*#@# herbal tea and dumb generic romances than it is about dancing of any kind at all. While I admit that I've not yet finished the series but I'm at ep13 which is more than half-way through the series and the dance portions are quite peripheral to the main story.

The characters are mostly stereotypical and painted in broad strokes of good and bad. The good guys are very good, forgiving, nice and gracious. The bad guys or the characters which aren't the main characters are spoilt, bratty, petty etc. and have few redeeming qualities. But that's not the worst of it. Aside from being shallow, these characters' basic nature seem to change whenever the script needs them to change.


Stephen Hyunh and Chen Fala

What made me mad enough to write this entry is what they did to Chen Fala's character, Ching Ka-man. Strangely enough, I actually found this minor character to be the most interesting of all the characters in this series and I think that's because all the main characters were so damn bland. The main characters, Ching Ka-tsun (Steven Ma), Li Sum-ying (Bernice Liu) and Yeung Sze-man (Kate Tsui) are nice, smart and almost flawless and therefore often boring and sometimes worse, good to the point of nauseating. In contrast, Ka-man is spoilt, angry and self-destructive. Her backstory also gives her even more depth. When she was rather young, her father died and her mother found herself unable to grief, work and care for her two young children all by herself. So she placed Ka-man in the care of the child's grand-mother and sent her son Ka-tsun to boarding school and the family barely saw each other, if at all, and certainly didn't live as a family till Ka-man was in high school. As a result she's deeply insecure, highly emotional, needy and resentful. She's a time-bomb, filled with anger, a sense of abandonment and a desperate need to feel loved, especially from her mother. Her brother, Ka-tsun, is apparently and unrealistically unaffected by this childhood trauma because he's not only older but also because he chose and forced his mother to send him away, unlike Ka-man who didn't have a choice.

At the beginning of the series, it seemed as though they were going to make Ka-man Sum-ying's main adversary. Ka-man takes an instant dislike to her and exhibits fits of jealous rage because she thinks that her mother likes Sum-ying more than herself and Ka-man would go out of her way to set Sum-ying up. While I wished that the script had made Ka-man's antics more intelligent, since the character didn't seem to be set up to be a stupid one, still I was glad that there was some conflict in the dance arena instead of in the herbal tea company.

Then suddenly, in the middle of the series, Ka-man in one of her drunken rages accidentally hurts someone and everyone rallies around her to try and help her out. Suddenly, in a blink of an eye, Ka-man becomes a docile, understanding, loving daughter and sister.

Oh boy.... I was sooooooo pissed. This was by far the most interesting character in the series till ep13 at least. I was hoping that they would develope her and her family a lot more because they have an unsusal and relationship which seemed always in danger of breaking up. But nooooooo..... because Chen Fala isn't one of the more important actresses in this series, they abruptly change her character so that they can drop her storyline midway and give us all the inane, boring and generic romantic blah-blah crap between Ka-tsun and Sum-ying, Sze-man and Dickson (Matthew Ko), Li Lik-keung (Sum-ying's brother, played by Wayne Lai) and Yao Lum-lum (Claire Yiu). Dancing was also abandoned and the herbal tea company's business conflicts took centre-stage.


Pix 1: Wayne Lai, Steven Ma, Pix 2: Bernice Liu, Kate Tsui, Pix 3: Matthew Ko, Wu Fung

Thankfully the performances in general are okay and Steven Ma and Bernice Liu are very watchable. Wayne Lai maintains his usual standard even though his character makes an abrupt and annoying change in the second quarter of the series. Regular B-lister Claire Yiu is also fine. Kate Tsui isn't fantastic but she's not terrible although I do find the quality of her voice to be lacking. I'm also still decidedly unimpressed with Stephen Wong, his horrible enunciation and his slightly wooden acting.


Chen Fala with Steven Hyunh in pix 1. Chen Fala in the centre, Bernice Liu on the right.

The person I actually found myself liking, surprisingly enough, is Chen Fala. For an inexperienced actress, I think she acquitted herself well enough and even though she was saddled with a very unlikeable character, she played her well enough that I found this character less annoying than sad and troubled and hence, sympathetic. It helps too that I do find Chen Fala rather good-looking and like her smile. :)


Pix 1: Steven Ma with the some of the support cast and on his left is the unfortunately Akina Hong Wah who gets yet another thankless role. Pix 2: Bernice Liu and Steven Ma with Claire Yiu who gets one of her rare more important roles in a TVB series.

Bottomline is, don't rent this series unless you really like the stars and I mean REALLY like them or unless you like fluffy romances which don't stimulate the mind. If you like drama and if you like your characters and plot to progress logically, then save your money and go rent something else. Unless a major miracle happens from ep13 till ep20, I'm unlikely to change my assessment of this series.

PART 2 - added 29th Oct 2007

Okay, I've just finished this series and it's official, this series is absolute trash and if it wasn't because I was working and wanted some tv on and if it wasn't because I actually wanted to know what happens to Ka-man, I would have dropped this series at ep13. There was no miracle, there was only disaster as all the characters, especially the so called good guys, managed to become even more unbearable than before.

All I can say is, no wonder Ka-man turned out so screwed up. Not only did she have a really horrid childhood, she got a mother who really didn't know how to help her obviously troubled daughter and a brother who's idea of showing concern is to think that things will work out by themselves and a future sister-in-law who's such a good person she's probably not even homo sapien, no wonder Ka-man turned to the first person who pays her some real attention. Never mind that this woman is so obviously nasty. Ka-man is so desperate for anyone to be the mother she never knew that even this totally I'm-so-bad-it-is-oozing-out-of-my-pores woman would do. It helped poor Ka-man even less that the script also decided to screw her over by abruptly changing her into turn-over-new-leaf daughter just so as to abruptly change her yet again into vengeful, hate-filled, self-destructive daughter. Really, it would have made so much more sense and taken just as little amount of effort to show that Ka-man hasn't exorcised the demons from her childhood. Seriously, I can't really blame her either, her family continues to pay her as little attention when she's good as when she was bad and hey, since it's more fun being bad, can anyone blame Ka-man for becoming bad again?!?!?!? I certainly can't. Fact is, she's simply the most comprehensible character in this series. From the very beginning till the end, Ka-man has always been a lost little girl who's self-destructive tendencies were really her way of crying out for help and all this stems from her feelings of abandonment and loneliness. I really did feel for this character in the end because her mother really did treat Sum-ying better, you never get the feeling any time in the series, except for when Ka-man got into trouble, that her mother even cared about her. Guess that explains why Ka-man got into so much trouble, even though I doubt if the script-writers intended it to be this deep given how shallow the rest of the script and characters are.

Seriously, the script should have shifted the focus of this series to Ka-man and her family. They would have been so much more fascinating, what a bloody waste. Another advantage of making the Ching family the focus of the story would be that the dance would be at the centre of this series as it should have been from the very beginning.

And really, one must give newcomer Chen Fala a ton of credit. She really did play this character relatively well because she is one of the reasons this character worked for me in spite of the inconsistent scripting.

Okay, that's enough ranting from me. I've wasted enough time and brain cells over this pointless and lazily scripted series. =(

Modern Beauty - Ada Choi

I'm currently in McDonald's waiting for a friend. My other friend has borrowed my ds and so i'm some what bored. So decided to do some blogging. Above is a not terribly well shot photo of one of the Modern Beauty salons in Singapore. Not sure if you can make out that Ada Choi is those posters. She's the spokes-person for this salon. I'm not into these things but figured you tvb series loving fans might get a kick out of it. Recently i've seen a few tvb series and have been thinking of writing capsule reviews as a full length review may be too time consuming. I'll be off to beijing next week for another vacation. Will try and write them before that. Ok. That's it for now.

cheers


- This blog was updated through my M1 mobile phone.

A Change of Destiny 天機算 (TVB) - review

copyright TVB

Before I left for Vietnam, I finished A Change of Destiny. I'll try and keep this review relatively short as the truth is there is virtually nothing good to say about this disastrous 20-episode series. TVB's track record this year has been pretty dismal. And although I've yet to see all the series released, I have seen the majority of them and most of them have been frustratingly below par.

So back to this series. This is probably as bad as Devil's Disciples in its aimlessness. The script lacked focus and showed a lack of ideas, research and worst... effort.

It's a real pity as I felt that this series had some potential but far too much time was spent on setting up the relationships and the personalities of each of the major characters. While this is important, it really doesn't take more than half the series to set up the protagonists' personalities and history with each other. Seriously, I don't think I need to see 15 episodes of the two main male characters Yip Yeung (Benny Chan Ho Man who was horribly annoying and really over-acting in this series) and Yuen Hei (Steven Ma Jun Wai 馬浚偉) being idiotically juvenile for me to know that they are immature and that Yip Yeung is a bratty rich kid while Yuen Hei is a poor kid who wants more.

This series also suffers from a very common TVB series failing and that is the over emphasis on the romance in the series. Now if this was a romance or romantic comedy or a typical idol series, the concentration on the trials and tribulations suffered by the various couples would not only be fine but warranted. But A Change of Destiny isn't a romance and by placing so much emphasis on the silly romance and worse, the more juvenile aspects of romance, it only makes this series seem either devoid of ideas or lazily scripted.

The characters in this series are also terribly badly written and they change at will depending on where the writer feels he wants the story to go. With 20 episodes to play with, it is appalling that the writers/producers of this series didn't make better use of it to focus on character development so as to better illustrate the theme of this series. It just won't do to have characters like Yip Yeung and Yuen Hei flip-flop without any proper explanation as to how or why their characters change the way they do, or how their relationship with each other can change so drastically. They go from enemies to friends in the space of one scene. Just giving the viewers one scene to say that they are in a similar predicament and hence, begin to feel sympathy for each other after episodes on end of them hating each others guts just doesn't cut it. It is difficult for the viewer to figure out just how and why they would begin helping each other out.

Yip Yeung and Yuen Hei's characters are horribly contradictory and while I know the writer hopes to show that these are imperfect characters, his decision to place too much emphasis on their juvenile and immature antics and rivalry for a good part of the series gives them so much imperfection that it is difficult to reconcile the better parts of these men's characters with their worse halves. And in the end, they come across more ridiculous than imperfect.

It doesn't make it easier when the series introduces unrealistic and inconsistent characters like Princess Fei Fung (Mimi Lo) and her maid Sum Yi (Selena Li Sze Wan 李詩韻). While they do try and setup the fact that Princess Fei Fung is an atypical princess, she has so little princess in her character that she's more like just a girl from a rich family which lends little credibility to her character. Her maid Sum Yi doesn't fare much better. She is at times too streetwise to be a palace maid and at times so naive and pure that she seems like the typical cloistered maid of the imperial palace. Sum Yi, like the rest of this series, makes very little sense.

In the end, the only characters I feel favorably for are Fok Yi Na (Shirley Yeung Si Kei 楊思琦), Li Sing Tin (Yuen Wah 元華) and Yuen Zi Yan (Rebecca Chan Sau Chu 陳秀珠). Although, I usually find Yuen Wah more annoying than effective in most TVB series, his Li Sing Tin is a good person and his actions are relatively well explained and can be easily understood. The same goes for Fok Yi Na and Yuen Zi Yan's characters. But these characters aren't the focus in this series and they aren't even that memorable and hence, aren't able to add too much to this dismal series at all.

It is a real pity that the executive producer of this series didn't exercise better control of this series. It really did have the potential to explore the greater themes of fate, destiny and free will. It is also the perfect opportunity to introduce audiences to one of China's lesser known mystical books, the Tui Bei Tu (推背圖), loosely translated as "Back Pushing Diagrams". Click here and here for more info.

The series begins by detailing the historical backdrop for the series and introducing the audience to a lesser known Chinese book of divination and prophecy called the Tui Bei Tu. The reason why I call it a lesser known book is because the book that most people know is the I Ching. The easiest way to describe the Tui Bei Tu is to say that it is like a Chinese version of a book written by Nostradamus. It is a book about prophecy and it is as open to interpretation as the prophecies written by Nostradamus.

The basic question this series asks is if one can use these traditional Chinese methods of divination to try and predict the future and to change one's fate. Several characters are obsessed with trying to change their fate by either predicting the future using the existing signs or trying to manipulate things and people so as to swing things in their favour.

So the series begins the story in the Tang Dynasty and first introduces to audiences the joint creators of the Tui Bei Tu, Li Chun Feng 李淳風 and Yuen Tian Gang 袁天罡. The series then briefly talks about how these two men became bitter rivals and how the Tui Bei Tu was then divided between the men and passed on to their descendants. The Li family held on to the diagrams while the Yuen family held on to the inscriptions for each of the 60 diagrams. Without the pairing of the two parts, it would be impossible to decipher the prophecies. With that, the Li family and the Yuen family parted ways and they also agreed that their two families will have nothing to do with each other in the future. Now as we all know, in any story, this wouldn't do and so naturally, their descendents do meet and everyone from Song Emperor Zhao Guang Yin to Yip Yeung would like a piece of it.

Now in the series, Li Shing Tin holds the diagrams and Yuen Zi Yan holds the inscriptions and the key to unlocking the secret of the Tui Bui Tu. While looking for his long-lost wife and daughter, Li Shing Tin will take on Yuen Hei as his disciple and he will also meet Yip Yueng. What is interesting about Yuen Hei and Yip Yeung is that the two young men are born on the exact same day and at the exact same time. Yuen Hei is thus puzzled and dissatisfied that he should be an orphan and poor while Yip Yeung is a rich and spoilt young man. The question that Yuen Hei wants the answer to is if Yip Yeung and him have the exact same horoscopes, then how is it that he doesn't live a better life. Yuen Hei wants Li Shing Tin to help him to change his destiny. Meanwhile, Yip Yeung will face several trials later in the series and he too will want to change his destiny.

So the stage is set for the opportunity to discuss more interesting issues like whether a man's life and future is beholden to powers beyond him or if a man's destiny lies in his own hands. The series makes a few feeble attempts to answer the various interesting questions they bring up but all these attempts are quickly squashed under the weight of poor scripting, characterization and plot progression. And while the series does try and reach for a more powerful ending by suggesting that Yip Yueng and Yuen Hei's destinies lie in the decisions they make, still it is too little too late as these more important plot points come far too late in the series and they are surrounded by too much inconsistency in the plot and the characters for the series to make any significant statements about the questions it asks.

What a pity, what a waste. In short, do not rent this series. It's certainly not worth the money nor perhaps the amount of time I took to write this longer than expected review. =)

Devil's Disciples 强剑 (TVB) - Review

The poster and the main cast, minus the veterans.

As always... a spoiler free review.

I was really looking forward to this series and have a favourable view towards most of the cast members so it pains me somewhat to say that this has to be one of the worst TVB series produced this year. Right now, I can't decide if this is as bad or worse than The Brink of Law and the only thing that's majorly in its favour right now is that Devil's Disciples is only 20 episodes long.

This is very disappointing work from Lau Kar Ho (刘家豪) who's The Gentle Crackdown was quite a good watch and is in my opinion one of TVB's best series in the last couple of years. Lau's When Rules Turn Loose was a bit of an iffy watch but benefited from sterling performances from the veterans and very good performances from Patricia Lau Cheuk Kei 劉綽琪 (sadly, no longer with TVB) and Wayne Lai Yiu Cheung 黎耀祥. Although Devil's Disciples included both Patricia Lau and Wayne Lai, poor Patricia's role was so minuscule that even if she was as brilliant as she was in When Rules Turn Loose, she could not save this series.

It is doubly disappointing that Lau wasted a cast which not only boasts the talents of Patricia Lau and the ever reliable Wayne Lai but also included Law Koon Lan 羅冠蘭 and some of TVB's more prominent young talents like Bosco Wong Chung Chak 黃宗澤, Bernice Liu Bik Yi 廖碧兒, Kevin Cheng Ka Wing 鄭嘉穎, Shirley Yeung Sze Kei 楊思琦 and Sharon Chan Man Chi 陳敏之. Terrible scripting, poor direction, flat characterization and bad casting doomed this series almost from the very beginning.

As usual, I won't really go into the synopsis of this series. If you want to read the English synopsis, please click here. There really isn't much of a story in this series. It's pretty much genre stuff and nothing is too hard to guess anyway. Fact is, they pretty much revealed who the main bad guy is in the very first scene anyway so no suspense there and the stupid opening song pretty much reveals who the couples are too. I'm not even one of those people who believes that every series must have surprises and be different and fresh. Just take a look at the very enjoyable Face to Fate. Now Face to Fate doesn't have a storyline that is all that different from other wuxia series but where it does succeed is that its story is tightly told, well paced and the leads are well cast and it is precisely all these things that Devil's Disciples lacks.

Devil's Disciples actually began reasonable well and gave us a few quirky characters who had the potential to be relatively likeable by the end. But by the end of the series, your patience with Mrs Shing (Law Koon Lan) and Shing Kung (Johnson Lee Sze Jit 李思捷), the hero Shing Fung's (Bosco Wong) mother and older brother have probably run quite thin. Initially, I thought that the humour was quite well placed and that this series aspired to be like The Gentle Crackdown in some ways until I figured out that one of the biggest problem with this series is that, unlike The Gentle Crackdown which is a comedy, Devil's Disciples has a lot of serious drama in the series and the physical humour, the cheers and the musical song and dance bits sit very, very, very uncomfortably with the serious portions. Beside the pointless script, it is this uneven tone throughout this series that is one of the series' big failings.


Bosco Wong and Kevin Cheng

It didn't help too that aside from the meandering storytelling and the ill placed comic moments, the executives at TVB decided to cast Kevin Cheng (plays King Lui) and Bernice Liu (plays Pak Tong Chi Lung) in this series. I'll admit right off the bat that I'm not the greatest admirer of Kevin Cheng's acting abilities. Now that is not to say that I don't like him or that he sucks but to me Kevin Cheng is not a versatile actor. He is very good in lighter series and happier roles like the ones he played in Yummy Yummy and Under the Canopy of Love but serious, brooding wuxia hero he is not. Kevin Cheng seemed a little ill at ease in the role and he also didn't seem able to grasp the type of movement and speech patterns required for wuxia series.


Bernice Liu

The lack of understanding of the required movement and speech patterns for the wuxia series is definitely the biggest reason why Bernice Liu is completely inadequate to play the role of the Second Senior Disciple of the Sacred Sword Clan and the daughter of Pak Tong Ngo, master of the Sacred Sword Clan (played by experience wuxia series veteran Eddy Ko Hung 高雄). She lacks the bearing of a proud, confident and powerful heroine who is an important member of the Wulin's most righteous, prominent and influential clan. Let's not talk about the veterans of wuxia like Ada Choi Siu Fun 蔡少芬, Brigitte Lin Qingxia 林青霞, Cheng Pei Pei 鄭佩佩, Sheren Tang Cui Man 鄧萃雯 etc, simply compare Bernice's acting to peers like Tavia Yeung Yee 楊怡 in Face to Fate and Twin of Brothers or Nancy Wu Ding Yan 胡定欣 in the same two series and the difference should be immediately obvious. Bernice Liu is not experienced enough in the wuxia series, or perhaps she's just too Westernise, to grasp the differences required in wuxia, period and modern series. It didn't help too that Bernice Liu was brought up overseas and her Cantonese isn't very strong. She definitely had trouble articulating the more difficult period and wuxia terms in Cantonese which added to her appearing less than capable in this role. Don't get me wrong, I like Bernice Liu and have liked her from as far back as Virtues of Harmony (the period version) and Survivor's Law but there is no denying that she was wrongly cast in this series because currently she just doesn't have enough experience to lead a wuxia series.

I hung on as long as I could before I skipped to the end and then returning to fast forward though episodes 16-18. I jumped to the end thinking that this being a wuxia series about the epic battle between good and evil, that there would be a mother of all battles at the climax of the series but boy was I wrong. Instead, we get an ending which rivals the moronic ending for Square Pegs. The ending was once again a hark back to Lau Kar Ho's more successful series The Gentle Crackdown and we get a lot of silly comedy which grated as what transpired before that was a serious discussion about the merits of letting go of hatred and the death of a major character in the series. In fact, the death of the major character was dealt with as though it was simply an unimportant side-note and it made me mad that the series didn't even end with a big fight and more emotion to justify this death. I felt sorry that this character was needlessly sacrificed since if Lau Kar Ho was going to end this series in such a comic fashion, then it made no sense to have any of the more important characters die or be sad so near the end of this series. It all the more clearly shows just how amateurish Lau Kar Ho's attempt at mixing tones and genres is.

What is also quite unforgiveably bad about this series is the over reliance on computer graphics. Instead of nicely choreographed fights we get CG, CG and more CG and it isn't even great CG. I know CG is expensive and they certainly can't afford CG like the kind we see in Stromriders but that said, the fights scenes use very little real movement and not even a lot of wire-fu. Some credit has to got to Eddy Ko Hung, Wayne Lai and Sharon Chan for making at the very least their fight scenes a little bit more interesting in spite of all the lousy CG in the series.


Sharon Chan

Perhaps the only saving grace in this series is Sharon Chan. I've liked this support actress for quite some time and am glad to see that TVB is giving her B-List roles like the role of Mok Man in this series. She, like Nancy Wu, Leila Tong Ning 唐寧 and to some extent Tavia Yeung really need way more support from TVB. These are most certainly some of their stronger and more versatile actresses and it is a pity that of this lot, not even Tavia Yeung and Leila Tong can say that they've truly led any series.

Sharon Chan is extremely good as Mok Man, the tormented hate-filled leader of the Blood Shadow Clan. Her clan was exterminated years ago by Pak Tong Ngo who lead the "good" clans of the wulin on a crusade to eradicate evil but who actually had an ulterior motive to steal a treasure from the Blood Shadow Clan. Sharon Chan's performance as Mok Man had traces of the brilliance Ada Choi showed as the temperamental and sometimes cruel Bride with White Hair in TVB's The Romance of the White Haired Maiden and if you know me, you'll know that that is one of the highest compliments I can pay to a TVB actress. Sharon Chan's Mok Man was tempestuous, temperamental, proud, cruel and powerful but yet underneath her hate and anger, her Mok Man exhibited pain, sadness and a sense of lost, subtly but surely in her eyes and gestures. It was Mok Man that kept me watching to to the bitter end for without Mok Man, I would have ditched this series by about episode 9 or 10.

In short =) , don't rent this series. Wait for it to be telecast on tv, it's not worth your hard earned money and precious time. And while I felt Sharon Chan was fabulous and the veterans were good as usual, all those reasons are not reason enough to waste both time and money on this series.

The Brink of Law 突圍行動 (TVB) - Review

this poster and all other series related photos courtesy of TVB

I've just finished watching The Brink of Law, a 25 episode series from TVB and I must say that it really isn't very good at all and in fact, it is doubly disappointing since I usually have a good opinion of Mui Siu Ching's series. This series is without a doubt one of her misses and is quite possibly one of the worst series she's ever produced. What a pity, since Mui Siu Ching has produced some classics like Where the Legend Begins (aka Lok Sun 洛神) and The Breaking Point (今生無悔) and other really good series like Colourful Life (錦繡良緣) and The Family Man (絕世好爸).

Perhaps Mui Siu Ching is losing her touch or maybe she's just not moving with the times or perhaps she is just not a suitable producer for this kind of epic family dramas. After all, this is more Chik Kei Yi's territory than Mui Siu Ching. Chik Kei Yi excels in epic struggles of good versus bad, Mui Siu Ching excels in detailing relationships and very often her characters are less flat and her inter-personal dynamics more intimate, more moving and more realistic than Chik Kei Yi's who often sacrifices that for action, suspense and effect. Unfortunately, except for the beginning when Tong Chi Ko's (Steven Ma Jun Wai) family seems quite interesting, we don't even get the usual high quality relationship drama from Mui Siu Ching in The Brink of Law.

As usual, I won't write a synopsis of the series but here are a few links for you to read about it in English. Click here and here.

The characters in this series are relatively flat and are painted in broad strokes of either good or bad and no gray at all, with the exception of Chi Ko's father Tong Tai Hoi who is played rather well by Ha Yu. The rest of the characters like Tong Chi Ko and his friend Tung Yat Jun (Ron Ng Cheuk Hei) are either such good people, they come across as almost unreal, or so evil that you know that they deserve a place in hell. And as in any old fashion good vs bad TVB series, the good guys will win and the bad guys will lose and so no suspense at all.


Shirley Yeung Si Kei (Sung Ka Yee) and Michelle Yim aka Mai Shuet (Sung Kam Chi) are delightfully evil in this series.

The main women characters in this series are also quite colourless with the exception of Sung Ka Yee (played quite despicably well by Shirley Yeung Si Kei) and Sung Kam Chi (played with devilish delight by Michelle Yim aka Mai Shuet). Unfortunately for Bernice Liu, whom I actually rather like, she is saddled with a rather boring character and her Tsui Wing only really becomes more pro-active and involved in the series much later on but than since the men are the heroes in this series, Tsui Wing will get sidelined again towards the end. Kate Tsui comes across the worst amongst the leads as she not only got the most boring role in the series, she also played her Yan Heung Ching so poorly that this character couldn't even be liked simply for being a good and simple girl.

The plot twists in the series actually seems quite amateurish too as I guessed most of them quite early in the series. Part of the reason why some of them seem amateurish is because sudden personality changes will give them away. Watch for Tsui Wing's sudden change in attitude towards Tong Chi Ko in the middle of the and tell me that you can't guess instantly what Tsui Wing's secret is. One of the twists is quite well hidden but if you're a veteran viewer of TVB series and this kinds of dramas, you should be able to guess quite early on too that a particular character isn't as good as he/she seems. In fact, the characters seem to change at will just simply to move the often illogical and unrealistic storyline.


Mai Shuet and Yueh Hua (Tung Jin Lung) - the veterans outshine the younger generation.

There is virtually no character development in this series, hence all the characters come across as caricatures. The only thing that prevents some of them from becoming unwatchable is the performances. The veterans performed very well. Mai Shuet plays against type here and is fun to watch. She also has quite a bit of chemistry with Yueh Hua who plays her character's husband Tung Jin Lung. It's been a while since I've seen Yueh Hua and I must say he still has it in him. He carries himself with so much assurance and authority that even when his character doesn't do much or doesn't seem to be that important to the story, you are still quite captivated by his screen presence.


Another fine performance from the often unappreciated Ha Yu (Tong Tai Hoi).

Ha Yu deserves a special mention as he is wonderful in this series. His Tong Tai Hoi may quite possibly be the character you feel for the most in this series. It's not the first time that Ha Yu has played an outwardly boisterous and almost buffoonish man who is actually using his laughter and clownishness as a veneer to cover up his more vulnerable true self. And perhaps it is because Ha Yu is so adept at it that he plays Tong Tai Hoi with so much ease, yet that is not to say that Ha Yu seems to be breezing though his performance. He is a true professional. Even though I've seen Ha Yu play half a dozen of these kinds of roles, yet he's always managed to reach out and move you each and every single time.


Steven Ma (Tong Chi Ko), Ron Ng (Tung Yat Jun), Kenneth Ma (Yan Heung Ming)

The younger generation of stars don't fare quite as well. Steven Ma is decent and perhaps the most watchable of the younger men in this series. He is unfortunately hampered with a bad script and I just don't find his character that engaging. Kenneth Ma Kwok Ming who plays Yan Heung Ming, Tong Chi Ko's best friend and Yan Heung Ching's older brother isn't spectacular. I have to admit though that I don't particularly like Kenneth Ma as I generally don't find him to be a very good actor and his voice and the way he speaks is terribly annoying which means that at least for me, his voice acting is a complete failure. And as for Ron Ng, saying his performance is banal is already pretty generous of me. Okay, so he is probably not helped by the fact that he is given the most goody-two-shoes character in this series, so much so that this character comes across almost devoid of any common sense it would seem but that said, Ron was still quite unable to give this character at least a modicum of personality and he will have to shoulder the blame for that.


The young female leads - Bernice Liu (Tsui Wing), Kate Tsui (Yan Heung Ching), Shirley Yeung (picture left)


The supporting cast includes Stephen Wong (seated, Tung Yat Lung), Vin Choi (Tung Yat Chiu) and Yoyo Chen (Tong Chi Man). Both Vin Choi and Yoyo Chen acquitted themselves quite well with Yoyo Chen even more watchable than lead Kate Tsui. Stephen Wong once again proves just what a wooden actor he can be.

The younger women actors don't have it much better than the men with the exception of Shirley Yeung who, although gets a pretty stereotypical character and who doesn't quite turn in a classic performace, plays her character with so much enthusiasm that she had me rooting for her. Shirley Yeung's Sung Ka Yee's arch nemesis in this series is the insipid Yan Heung Ching. Sung Ka Yee actually had me agreeing out loud when she raged at Yan Heung Ching at one point in the series, asking her "Are you brainless or simply retarded?" Okay, that was probably loosely translated but the sentiment is there and I wholeheartedly agree with it. Yan Heung Ching is so boring it is hard to see how a person like her, a person who doesn't seem to have any strong opinions, a person who prefers to let her boyfriend run her life, can actually be a fashion designer of so much talent that she can go from junior designer to head of a huge project in a matter of months. No wonder Sung Ka Yee is pissed at her. It doesn't help that Kate Tsui plays Yan Heung Ching so poorly that I can't see why even the almost equally colourless Tung Yat Jun would be interested in her. It doesn't help too that Kate Tsui and Ron Ng have so little chemistry and that their romance often felt quite pointless and a waste of precious and expensive on-air time and everytime they cut to their scenes, the pacing of the series would suffer.


The romances among the younger generation include the triangle between Tung Yat Jun, Yan Heung Ching and Sung Ka Yee. All I can say is it's a pity the script doesn't have Sung Ka Yee come to the realization that Tung Yat Jun and Yan Heung Ching should be left to bore each other to death. The other romance is the much thwarted love affair between Tsui Wing and Tong Chi Ko and although this affair won't set any fires burning, it was still more interesting than the Tung Yat Jun and Yan Heung Ching one because Steven Ma and Bernice Liu are simply better actors and just have more chemistry together.

The plot in this series really feels like it's stuck in the 80s and early 90s. The scenarios are so typical of an epic family drama of that time and parts of the story seem equally fantastical that it doesn't seem to gel with the more realistic and more rounded plotting and characterization from the late 90s onwards. For example, Tung Yat Jun goes from vet in one episode to a very capable businessman in a fashion industry in the next episode. That's ridiculous.

It also really doesn't help that this series suffers from a serious case of misrepresentation. The series is called The Brink of Law in English and seriously, no one really works on the brink of law in this series. They are all either clearly on the good side or clearly on the bad side. There is no brink, no edge and no gray in this series. The Chinese title is even more guilty of misrepresentation. "突圍行動" could be quite literally translated as "Sudden Surround Movement/Action/Operation" and even if my translation didn't make that much sense, you can still get the sense that the title really denotes action and actually implies more specifically police action because of the term "行動" which can be translated as "operation". Now this series has a lawyer in Steven Ma's Tung Chi Ko but he's not seen practising law that often and the law in this series isn't the main focus. There are several policemen and women in this series but the series isn't about them either and they don't really launch that many operations in the series and even if they do, they feel more like they are peripheral to the main plot. But with a title like that, one can be forgiven for thinking that you've rented a police procedural or a series that is about lawyers and court cases etc. That added false expectation can only contribute to a greater sense of dissatisfaction when it is revealed that this is essentially an old-fashion family drama and worse, not even a very good one.



The ever reliable unsung heroes of TVB dramas are the support cast. This support cast boast the talents of Lee Kwok Lun, June Chan Kei, Lo Lok Lam, Yvonne Lam Yi Kei, Mary Hon Ma Li.

In short, I do not recommend renting The Brink of Law at all. Go rent The Price of Greed (千謊百計). That was not only a much better series, it is actually a rather good series and Kate Tsui's performance there is actually far more watchable than her performance in The Brink of Law. And if one has already seen The Price of Greed and is bored beyond words, then rent Dicey Business (賭場風雲). Even though the second half of Dicey Business is really not very good at all, at the very least you'll get more colourful and sympathetic characters and then there is the added pleasure of seen Tavia Yeung Yee (楊怡) putting in another very fine performance in a very different role from the ones she's normally given.


photo courtesy of Buttercrab

Finally, a little pressie for my TVB fans friends. =) Here's a photo of Kevin Cheng Ka Wing (鄭嘉穎). This was taken when he visited Singapore and attended an event at Vivocity. This photo was shot by a friend who goes by the nickname of Buttercrab. If you wish to take a look at the rest of the photos please visit her blogspot. But before I give you a link, please don't post these photos anywhere else, instead direct people to her webbie and also tell those you direct to the site to do the same. Buttercrab is new to the world of blogging and hasn't taken the precaution of watermarking her photos. I know she's worried folks would just philfer her work so please don't scare her off from blogging. Thanks. Right, here's the link.

enjoy =)

TVB - Dicey Business

(all pictures courtesy of TVB)


I'm currently watching this 35ep TVB series called Dicey Business. Yeah, I know, it does have a pretty goofy title but it's kind of normal for a TVB series to have an English title that's not terribly elegant. Casino Wars was the working title for this series but although that does sound better, it's not that accurate though but enough of that.

I won't really go into the synopsis of this series as they are pretty easy to find on the internet and if you follow the link I provided above by clicking on the title of this series, you'll find the synopsis in English.

Here are my impressions of this series for my TVB watching friends. Currently I'm at ep18, I think. Well, I'm definitely on Disc 6 if you're watching the dvds.

This series isn't a bad rental if you like the main stars. The stars are Bobby Ouyang, Miu Kiu Wai, Jessica Hsuen, Bosco Wong, Tavia Yeung Yee, Hui Siu Hung (Benz Hui) and a number of some of TVB's better veterans. While not a bad rental, this series doesn't look like it'll be a classic by any means. While the story might make use of the gambling industry as a backdrop, most of the story is pretty much standard TVB relationship fare. The main three characters played by Bobby Ouyang, Miu Kiu Wai and Jessica Hsuen aren't exactly that interesting and their relationship isn't that interesting too. Miu Kiu Wai probably has the most intriguing of the three but the script doesn't really go too much into it.

Luckily enough, the script does more or less keep moving along and doesn't go around in circles so it doesn't feel draggy. Also, the performances are in general good to acceptable and so the series is rather easy to follow because there isn't anything that will really annoy one. The one exception is Jessica Hsuen whom I felt didn't have a good grasp of her character. And yes, I know her fans, whom I'm actually quite scared of as I have seen them rip into folks who don't think her performance is fantastic, will kill me. But I've never been one to shy away from saying what I think when it comes to TVB.


The problem with Jessica Hsuen's performance is that it simply isn't good enough. She's not bad and she's competent but she has so much screen time and so she really needs to be very good. Unfortunately, because she's unable to express the inner feelings of her character, she often comes across either a little over or a little flat but never perfect. It's really not one of her better performances and her best performance for me were still in Secret of the Heart and And I Hate You So. The look that she gave Aaron Kwok's character in And I Hate You So in the last scene that we see her character is the look I think she doesn't seem able to conjure up consistently enough.


Bobby Ouyang is good in this series. And even though his character isn't as intriguing as Miu Kiu Wai's, his acting more than makes up for it. He's really known more for his comic acting but really what many viewers always overlook is how strong he is in the dramatic department. Just watch Bobby Ouyang's eyes when he looks at Jessica Hsuen's character when she is sad, his eyes aren't just sad, his eyes are tender.


Miu Kiu Wai isn't as good as Bobby Ouyang in the acting department but he does cut a very dashing figure in his suit. And this character is very suitable for him, it is really a character he's played many times and so Miu Kiu Wai comes across very watchable and even quite sympathetic.

Hui Siu Hung is really funny as the sidekick in this series. His character is a little effeminate and fussy. If you've seen him in Running Out of Time, you'll know just how well he's playing this character. While he may not be laugh-out-loud funny here, he's used very effectively.


My actors I like the best in this series are, surprisingly, Bosco Wong and Tavia Yeung Yee. They seem to genuinely understand the characters they are playing and they act with they eyes and their body. Although, Bosco Wong's character does the kind of quick recovery from a man with severe psychological problems to a successful man that can only happen in a TVB series, he is able to pull it off partly because of the script does allow him enough time to do it and partly because his body language is rather good in this series.


But my absolute favourite in this series is Tavia Yeung Yee and her bimbo character. She's hilarious and very convincing as the ditsy, materialistic, silly and often deluded gal. If played poorly, her character could have been rather annoying but Yeung Yee makes her very likable. She's very natural and her body language is very good. What is even more impressive about this performance is that it is as convincing as her performance in Land of Wealth, Twin of Brothers and Eternal Happiness and she plays very, very different characters in all these series. A pity her screen time isn't too high and if you're a Yeung Yee fan, you'll be quite disappointed with that.

If you're looking for a TVB series to pass the time with, Dicey Business really isn't a bad rental. While it isn't a classic, it is definitely above average because the pacing is good and the acting is in general also good. Anyway, there really isn't any recently fully released series out right now that is more worthy of a rental than this series. Glittering Days does come close but it has moments that really don't work for me.

Right, that's it from me. I think I'll try and continue with Guizhou after this entry. Good night. =)

AMEND:-
I've just finished this series and I feel compelled to amend this post to add in a brief comment on how I felt about the series as a whole. Unfortunately, Dicey Business takes a turn for the worse after the halfway mark and sacrifices proper plot progression, pacing and character developement to force the events in the series to take some sensational turns. So I feel compelled to return to this entry and temper my intial mostly positive assessement of this series to average.

At the end of the series, I must say the only character I still find endearing is Tavia Yeung Yee's Chu Mei. And Jessica Hsuen still remains unimpressive except for the scene when she sits on the stairs and cries late in the series, she played that scene quite well and that's in my opinion her best scene in this series. And before I forget, I need to give Eileen Yeow a thumbs up in this series. She played her gambling addicted character quite gleefully well but yet was able to give her a vulnerability underneath that made her quite sympathetic by the time you get to the end of the series.

The ending for this series is typical TVB crap. While not as moronic as Square Pegs and, I'm not opposed to open ended endings, this one simply wasn't suspenseful enough or poetic enough to work. Not sure if I'll recommend this series now. It's still okay to pass the time I guess and if you're fans of any of the stars than watch the series and if you like Yeung Yee, then it really might be worth braving this series to see her even though she doesn't get a lot of screentime.

Procrastination

So.... still remember that in my previous entry I said that I was going to clean up my room and that if I got bored with that I might update the blog with more on my Guizhou trip? Well.... I lied. =D

Not only did I not do a single thing to make my room look less messy than Neo's home in The Matrix, I also did not update the blog with anything on Guizhou. Instead I spent my time doing nothing, chewing a lot of the chewing gum I brought back from China. =)

I was also watching some very old TVB series starring very young looking but now veteran actors like Liza Wang, Patrick Tse and Ray Lui just to name a few. It's actually not a bad series and I remember the song from my childhood. It's sung by Liza Wang and in pinyin the title of that song and the series is "Wan Shui Qian San Zhong Shi Qing". The English title of the series is "Love and Passion", something I didn't know till my mum rented the series.

I'm not much of a Liza Wang fan. These days I usually find her massively annoying but she's actually okay here. The one I really like in this series is Ray Lui who is good and very cool and you can't help but wonder why Liza Wang's character would pick wimpy Patrick Tse's character over him. =) Actually, to be fair, I know why she'll marry Patrick lah but I like Ray more. =)

Anyway, I've been working some more on the photos I took in Guizhou but I probably won't have time to update the blog for a bit as these photos have to be ready by tomorrow evening. I'm suppose to go attend a family Christmas dinner thing at my aunts' home and my sis-in-law will be there and I really do need to give her the photos on a dvd as I promised.

I've also been reading up a bit about Guizhou and doing some reading on the internet about it. I now wish I had recorded my Guizhou guide's commentary as I don't remember 3/4 of what she said about Guizhou. When I was going through the photos, I actually didn't know the name of one of the lakes we went to. A bit bummed about that. =(

Anyway, it is over and out for now. If I miraculously do finish on working on those photos I may continue with my Guizhou trip entries but we'll see.

cheers

recent updates...

I've made quite a bit of progress on my final project for my Maya course. But sadly, I've not really had the time to update the blog as I'm simply too busy to do it. But when I have time to, I will hopefully be able to upload the final picture of Set 1 and the 3 characters I've created so far. I still have Set 2 and animation and have a 20th Nov dateline. So I really am quite pressed for time.

Got bulldozed into doing some additional work at work next week and am really not terribly happy about it, nor am I looking forward to more work preventing me from finishing up my Maya project. But the marshmallow in me made it difficult for me to refuse to do this favour for people I consider my friends.... sigh.... I need to be nastier. :)

Lately, I've managed to watch some TVB series as I worked on my projects. Have finished Face to Fate, Maiden's Vow and Love Guaranteed. Of the three, I would say that Maiden's Vow was the worst and most over-hyped of the lot. It began with a nice concept but the script was terrible and it couldn't seem to decide how to tie 4 generations of a single family properly. In the end, it ended up being a superficial link, that is, they are 4 generations of a family, that is their link... yeah... whatever. Face to Fate turned out to be the most enjoyable of the three. While the series didn't exactly boast a very unsual storyline, the execution, the development, the performances all came together to form a very nice whole.

Anyway, that's it form me for now. I have to dash in a bit and need to get ready to leave. :)

ta ta

Beautiful Cooking - Episode 11

Check out this ep of Beautiful Cooking. Hilarious. =)

Ada Choi, Rain Li and some HK actress/singer?? called Kary compete in this good natured and light hearted cooking programe. The show is hosted by Edmond Leung, Alex Fong Lik Sun and Ronald Cheng I think. I'm not sure if Ronald Cheng is a host because this is the only ep of Beautfiful Cooking I've seen and he was sick even though he did participate. The judges for this episode is this guy called Justin (not sure who he is), Leo Ku and Roger Kwok.

enjoy

TVB - Bar Bender

It's rather late in this part of the world at the moment and I'm really feeling sleepy. But I don't really want my last post of the night to be about the below average TVB series The Biter Bitten so I'll just leave a brief comment on Bar Bender and hopefully return to comment another day.

I've just finished this series and I must say it is surprisingly entertaining. The series is full of characters with character which really help to hook you in inspite of the relatively typical overall story arc and premise of the series. The other thing that is quite impressive about this series are the well researched law cases and the way the lawyers use the law to fight their case. The series also boasts good plot and character progression.

I totally recommend it.

Right, that's it for now, time to sleep =) Good night.

TVB - The Biter Bitten

Goodness, TVB is really never short of bad English titles. While the title itself does try to express a certain series of events in this series. Still, it isn't terribly elegant at all. A buddy and I were talking about amusing TVB series titles at one point in time and we did think of coming up with a list but we never got around to doing it but that's another story all together. =)

Right, back to The Biter Bitten. This series stars Benny Chan, Michael Tong, Shirley Yeung, Linda Chung and a ton of mostly reliable TVB veterans, second supports and extras. I'm not terribly good with summaries nor do I have a great deal of patience when it comes to writing them so I'll try to be as succinct as possible. Briefly, the series is about two smart ass young men played by Benny Chan and Michael Tong who wind up working for a zoo in China and at the same time they some how get involved in mystery solving, treasure hunting, archaelogical digs and the circus. Sounds crazy? Well.... welcome to entertainment Hong Kong style, trust me, their films have tried to do even crazier things.

Anyway, this series is pretty much crap so I don't really want to spend a lot of time talking about it since it'll really be a bit of a waste of time. The series is probably aimed for a rather young crowd, I'm thinking maybe the teenage crowd but they kind of messed that up if they aimed for that crowd since the juvenile humour and the annoying two male leads which are obviously too old for their roles make it seem like the series was aimed at the adolescents.

Basically, avoid at all costs. The only two things that kept me watching to the bitter end was 1) I paid damn good money for this series so I felt like if my mum was going to abandon it then I should at least finish it 2) Shirley Yeung's and Michael Tong's characters' crazy antics in the latter stages of the series were surprisingly quite amusing. Other than that everything about the series was dumb, illogical and badly developed. It felt like they were trying to force National Treasure (a rather entertaining film) and The Touch (a really awful) film together and only succeeded in producing some monstrous hybrid of a tv series.

BTW, I really don't know what's the big fuss about Linda Chung. I don't find her that good a newcomer. Let's just say that I actually like Elaine Yiu, Charmaine Chin and a few of the other new young actresses in TVB more than Linda Chung which really does same something about how unimpressive I find her.

TVB - Lethal Weapons of Love and Passion

Having somehow pulled my calf muscle rather badly over the weekend sometime back (it turned out to be worse than a pulled muscle but that's another story), I decided to go see the doctor and rest the leg for the day and took two days of leave from work. At that point in tiem, I thought, this would be the perfect opportunity for me to talk about one of the shows I'm currently watching. Unfortuanately, that post languished unpublished and in a draft format for weeks on end till I decided to just amend it and publish it anyway.

But before I get to the series, let me just say.... god, what an unweildy title. A buddy and I were joking about it the other day and we concluded that that title could easily be construed as a bondage type porn flick. =D TVB seems to have a knack of coming up with the strangest English titles for their series. But that's something I'll leave for another post. =)

I'm not done with LWOLAP yet. I'm only up to disc 5 (ep 13-15) of a 40 episode series but so far I find this series rather entertaining. It has unsual storyline and is rather different from many of the typical wuxia series we've seen.

The setting is in the Ming Dynasty during the reign of the peasant Emperor Hongwu aka Zhu Yuanzhang. What is of particular interest here is the take the production team had on this period in history. Zhu Yuanzhang lead a popular peasant rebellion to overthrown the unpopular Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty.

Hmmmm.... I left this comment unfinished and saved as a draft for sometime but have left LWOLAP unfinished for a while so can't quite remember what I wanted to say. I'll post this up first and when I get around to finishing it I'll add more comments in a later post.

Meanwhile I'm trying to finish a lighter and surprisingly watchable series, Always Ready, and if I've time and the inclination, I'll also also trash The Biter Bitten in a separate post.

rgds

TVB - Safe Guards

Starring: Steven Ma, Wayne Lai, Kwok Fung, Elaine Yiu, Chuang Zhi Guang, Kara Hui Ying-hung, Suet Nei etc

I finished watching this series early last week and have put off writing any comments on it till now simply because I've been too busy.

This is simply the best TVB series I've watched since Yummy Yummy (Food for Life). Even though Elaine Yiu is uneven in her first lead role, given that this is only her fourth series (I think), I feel she aquitted herself well enough.

The performances in this series and the very strong script is what makes this a memorable series. The setting is the Qing Dynasty and it centres round a family runned "biao ju" (security escorts) who are like the Cisco guards in Singapore today. If you pay them money, their courier your stuff and ensure that it gets anywhere you want it.

It's been a long time since TVB has managed to depict business so well. The last time they did it was in Point of No Return which was only a partially good series since the romance in there was soooo silly and juvenile that it destroyed the series for me.

SG suffers no such flaws. Instead, the business of running the "biao ju" is portrayed quite well and although I don't think it is anywhere close to the truth, still it makes exciting stuff and seems reasonable realistic. The almost larger than life portrayal of Kwok Fung's and Steven Ma's characters give them a heroic edge which works really well in this series since men of the "biao ju" must surely have been strong, tough and fearless men. But what made the series shine was also the portrayal of these men outside of the business. At home and in private, these men exhibit personalities and flaws that not only make them human but make them believable and so likeable.

SG's characters are often multi-facet and fully developed and also progress quite logically. This is quite often a series flaw in TVB series. They often start off by giving you interesting characters only to have them be completely incomprehensible as the series progressed. But SG is a rather consistent series and while each character does grow and develope, this developement is well explained and fully within reason for each character.

What TVB has consistently been able to do well is to depict epic family struggles. Good examples of this would be Secret of the Heart, Instinct, Greed of Man and to some extent Point of No Return and The Charm Beneath. No exception here. SG has a very involving and absorbing family struggle at the heart of it's story. Wayne Lai plays the oldest son and the logical heir to the family business if only he was a capable man. The second son is far more capable then Wayne Lai's character but he is only the second son and the son of the second wife to boot. But the most capable of Kwok Fung's character's son is Steven Ma's character but he is an adopted son and that practically disqualifies him from the position. While it seems in the beginning that Steven Ma's character would be the stereotypical good and grateful adoptive son, the script fleshed this character so well and Steven Ma played him so well that one never feels that he is colourless and bland. It is characterisation like this that really sets SG apart from many TVB series.

Kwok Fung was really good in this series and played the stern and commanding patriarch with authority and yet managed to portray with great conviction the childlike side to this man when he is with his wife. Although in the end, my favourite couple is the couple played by Zhuang Zhi Guang and Kara Hui Ying-hung. They had a great deal of chemistry and even though they were very different in nature, the script and their performance made them feel like they were born to be together.

SG is a great series and I've not liked a series this much since Yummy Yummy. Under the Canopy of Love came close for a moment with it's strong beginning, witty script and quirky, charming characters but the last section of the series evolved into the usual romance tale that the series suffered somewhat in the end.

Now if only TVB can make more series like SG. I would be a happy happy person. =) Here's hoping that Dance of Passion would be great. It has a strong cast and Ada Choi's in it, so I'm really looking forward to this series.