THE GEM OF LIFE [TVB]

Written by Joanne Lee

"Having worked in jewellery, I have a real fascination with the stuff and they had some really nice pieces on the show. Which you couldn’t forget was sponsored by MaBelle, since the word came up every ten minutes, which is OK, since I like MaBelle."



SPOILERS ... SPOILERS ... SPOILERS

Released In
2009

Number of Episodes
82

Cast
Hong Family
Maggie Shiu – Sylvia Hong Nga Yin
Gigi Lai – Constance Hong Nga Tung
Ada Choi – Jessica Hong Nga Sze
John Chiang – Hong Ching Yeung
Louise Lee – Hong Bak Siu Yau

Ho Family
Elliot Yue (Ngok Wah) – Martin Ho Fung
Moses Chan – Terrence Ho Jit Lam

Shek Family
Wong He – Shek Tai Wo
Bosco Wong – Will Shek Tai Chuen

Sung Family
Chan Hung Lit – Philip Sung Sai Man
Helen Ma – Margaret Sung Kwok Yuen Yee
Linda Chung – Elise Sung Chi Ling
Queenie Chu – Mandy Man Wai
Queena Chan Dan Dan – Charlie Cheuk Yi

Others
Bowie Lam – Calvin Ko Cheung Sing
Kenny Wong – Sunny Yau Yat Tung
Eddie Kwan – Derek Chan Kai Fat
Rebecca Chan – Melissa Yan Wai Ting
Florence Kwok – Catherine Shum Ji Tang
Lau Dan – Suen Wai Tak


Summary
A series with a phenomenal cast (both in size and quality), the story goes through just about everything in its 82 episode run. The story revolves around the story of the three Hong sisters Sylvia (Maggie Shiu), Constance (Gigi Lai) and Jessica (Ada Choi), as well as those who are connected to them through family, work or romance. Their father (John Chiang) works in the diamond industry for boss Suen Wai Tak (Lau Dan), and their mother (Louise Lee) is a housewife.

All three sisters start the series as married women – Sylvia is married to pilot Tim, Constance is married to artist Frankie, and Jessica is married to rich businessman Patrick. All three end up separated and living at home within the first few episodes. Tim has another family, Frankie is cheating on Constance with their close friend and Patrick fakes his death to avoid debts. Jessica ends up shouldering the debts, declares bankruptcy, and the rest of the family rally around her.

Sylvia begins to work for Calvin (Bowie Lam), and eventually they strike up a relationship. His business starts to fail, so Sylvia marries Sunny (Kenny Wong) so that Calvin will then forget about their relationship and be free to marry Catherine (Florence Kwok) who has a big company that is capable of saving Calvin’s comparatively small company.

Constance initially doesn’t get along with Terrence (Moses Chan), but they soon become friends. She rejects his advances because he is a renowned player, and she begins to date Derek instead who is a lying bitter man, but undoubtedly quite in love and obsessed with her. Derek has a misunderstanding with Suen Wai Tak and tries to sue him, with the financial assistance of Calvin who hopes to benefit from the payout. Derek is eventually jailed for vandalising property and Constance later marries Terence.

Jessica begins to work for a PR company owned by Melissa (Rebecca Chan). She schemes to meet and strike up a relationship with Melissa’s good friend Martin (Elliot Yue), who is Terrence’s father and extremely rich. She eventually marries Martin and lives the life of a rich wife once again. Shek Tai Wo (Wong He) has known the three sisters since he was young, and he has always been in love with Jessica. He is happy to help anybody and doesn’t feel the need to be very rich or successful. His brother Will (Bosco Wong), on the other hand, is highly ambitious and ruthless in achieving his goal. He ends up working for Melissa and eventually inherits the PR firm from the widowed and childless Melissa when she dies.

Sung Sai Man (Chan Hung Lit) is a rich businessman with several wives. He always takes advantage of his friend Martin, much to the disgust of Melissa and Terrence. He loses his company to Martin after it turns out Martin has been patiently plotting many years to gain his trust so that he can bring down Sung Sai Man in such a way that he has no chance of reviving his losses. Martin takes advantage of Sung Sai Man’s weakness for women and bribes Charlie (Queena Chan Dan Dan) to seduce Sung Sai Man to help his cause. Everyone deserts Sung Sai Man with the exception of his first wife Margaret (Helen Ma) and his granddaughter Elise (Linda Chung) who is a bratty rich girl.

Later in the series, Jessica takes control of the company and goes head to head with Terrence who thinks that Jessica is brainwashing his father Martin. Will has his own company, Calvin has his company, and the remainder of the series revolves around business wars and love triangles. That’s just the glossing-over summary of the series, but with 82 episodes, it’s difficult to go into too much detail.

Characters
Hong Family
Sylvia Hong Nga Yin – Maggie Shiu
Sylvia is headstrong and business-like. She is a total workaholic and she likes things to be right and just, which is why she constantly goes head to head with her mother who is happy to bend the rules if it is advantageous to her and her family. Sylvia was my favourite character at the start, but she became very weak and even a little irrational towards the end. She got slightly ‘evil’ even; her love for Calvin drove all her decisions and she seemed to lose herself, which was disappointing because she started out so strong. Maggie was great; can’t think of much to fault in her acting. There were some questionable clothing choices, but on the whole, she was very glamorous and classy.

Constance Hong Ngai Tung – Gigi Lai
An upright moral character who sometimes took her morals too far. She was nice and sweet, and she stayed that way until the end, but she didn’t really know how to look at the big picture most of the time. She was the classic ‘nice’ character, but I found her to be teetering on boring. She whinged a little too much and was too holier-than-thou. Gigi was very pretty in the series, and there was nothing wrong with her portrayal of Constance at all; I just didn’t like the character very much.

Jessica Hong Nga Sze – Ada Choi
Probably the character with the most storylines and screen-time. Jessica wasn’t necessarily a bad person, but she was very selfish and ambitious. She couldn’t live without money and she did everything she could to attain it. She didn’t hesitate to use others, but sometimes you could see that she did feel bad afterwards. With a character like that, Ada had so much to work with. She captured every facet of Jessica nicely and really carried the series along, especially around the middle to end parts when it was heavily focused on her.

Hong Ching Yeung – John Chiang
Ching Yeung was an honest working man who loved his family dearly. He did everything his wife or daughters requested of him, and he rarely took charge because his wife was the one who did that. At the end when his wife was affected with dementia, he took hold of the situation and gave his daughters abit of a dressing down that was sorely needed. Not much for John Chiang to do, but he carried the character naturally and without trouble.

Hong Bak Siu Yau – Louise Lee
An extremely clever woman who knew what she wanted and would happily scheme to make it happen. She did what she thought was best for her daughters, and while her methods were questionable, her motives were usually on the right track. A brilliant character; the daughter who most resembled her personality would have been Jessica, but Siu Yau was always calmer and thought things through even better. Louise Lee was awesome! She had such a character change from the smart scheming woman at the beginning to the dementia riddled woman at the end, and she did all of it perfectly. The character was so much more fascinating than the characters she won praise for in Heart of Greed as well as Moonlight Resonance.


Ho Family
Martin Ho Fung – Elliot Yue (Ngok Wah)
At first he seemed like a nice businessman who was willing to be taken advantage of on a business-level in order to avoid trouble. Then you realise that he had been scheming for decades to rid himself of his rival Sung Sai Man. He was more ruthless than Sung Sai Man ever was. He was later kidnapped which turned him into a paranoid hermit. He gave instructions to Jessica on how to run the company, and he later died of a heart attack. Elliot Yue, faultless.

Terrence Ho Jit Lam – Moses Chan
Rich son of Martin, he ran his own smaller company. A credible businessman, Calvin always despised him for being born into wealth without having to earn it. He, like his wife Constance, had big problems looking at the big picture and did everything he wanted to do without restraint. He was ridiculously unreasonable at times. He would do something wrong, and he would deny it. Then, when it was obviously that he had to have done it, he loudly declared “OK, so I did it. So what??”. And then he would start blaming other people. Like when he slept with Elise, it was apparently entirely her fault. And he didn’t understand why Constance was not supportive of his decision to completely destroy her sister! And the character became unredeemable to me when he neglected to save Derek from the burning car because he saw him as a competitor for Constance. I thought he was a terrible character who was probably supposed to be good but turned out annoyingly bad. In terms of acting, Moses is also probably the only main lead I wasn’t happy with. Nothing to do with my dislike of the character, either. I’ve always found Moses to be hit and miss. I really like the guy, and I like his series. He’s great at screwball comedy, but I think he comes up lacking for dramatic situations. Sometimes he still has a way of speaking unnaturally, which really breaks up romantic scenes and ‘everyday life’ scenes.


Shek Family

Shek Tai Wo – Wong He
The perennial nice guy. Helpful to all and very likeable, although sometimes a little nagging. His love for Jessica was touching, if not a little blind and stupid as well. You had to feel for the guy who was just so incredibly nice and didn’t get anything in return. Wong He is so good at being pedantic characters, and his crying scenes were top notch.

Will Shek Tai Chuen – Bosco Wong
Very ambitious guy. Overly ambitious. Needs money and power, although he does care for his brother who brought him up and put him through higher education. That care and concern stops there, however, and doesn’t extend to the Hong family who he has actually known since he was quite young and should be quite close family friends with. I’m undecided if he was a protagonist or an antagonist, because he wasn’t *that* bad, but he wasn’t good either. Very cocky and a grudge holder. In a cast full of veterans, they had to choose someone young and I’m glad it was Bosco. Of the younger generation in TVB, I think quite highly of him and he didn’t disappoint.


Sung Family
Sung Sai Man – Chan Hung Lit

Initially the most evil of them all, he loses everything and he becomes someone who only always had a big mouth. He comes back for revenge, however, but then he never does succeed. He’s a character you’re supposed to hate, but then he has his good moments where he’s with Elise. He really seems to hate his son though. Chan Hung Lit can do comedy (not that there is any for him to do here, but he was hilarious in Best Selling Secrets), he can do drama. His accent still baffles me sometimes, but I do like how they sometimes had some of the characters (Sung Sai Man, Elliot Yue and Helen Ma) speaking in Shanghainese (I think?) – it just kind of gives you the feeling that these people have known each other forever and ever, which makes everything that happens a little more meaningful.

Elise Sung Chi Ling – Linda Chung
Elise starts out as a bratty selfish rich girl who knows how to suck up to her grandfather. She’s just so despicable in the series that you want to slap her. When her grandfather loses everything, she goes back to studying and becomes quiet and submissive, which is a role that I’m more used to seeing Linda Chung doing! All credit to her for handling the character during the character change though – I had my doubts whether she could pull off the bratty and cocky character without coming off as annoying and snobbish, but for the most part, she’s done pretty well. She’s improving consistently, and working with so many veterans has probably helped her a lot as well.

Others
Calvin Ko Cheung Sing – Bowie Lam
An awesome character! He’s bad, but he’s so good at it. He gets under everybody’s skin and you can’t help but laugh at how he does it. He had a rough upbringing where his mother worked as a prostitute to support the both of them, so he vowed to be rich and successful. Despite all the bad things he does, he cares deeply for his mother. And he clearly stated that he would do anything, no matter how low it is, if it will be good for him. However, he won’t go around hurting people if it is of no advantage to himself. That’s a selfish person talking, but I like that he won’t feel the need to destroy other people out of petty revenge – like Terrence always wanted to do. Bowie never lets me down.

Sunny Yau Yat Tung – Kenny Wong
Like Wong He’s character, Sunny was just a good guy. I was incredibly surprised when he came out as a homosexual though because I really didn’t see it coming and I was so annoyed that they got the most muscular and ‘man’ of the cast to be the gay character! Very caring and friendly, and like Sylvia, willing to do anything for Calvin. I’ve always liked Kenny, even back in the 90s when he had some truly terrible hairdo’s. His acting hasn’t really improved, but it’s always been passable.

Derek Chan Kai Fat – Eddie Kwan
An irritating character at the beginning who was greedy and malicious. He turned into a bitter character who wasn’t greedy anymore, and finally to a really nice guy. The turn was so dramatic that it didn’t even seem like the same guy anymore. It’s been ages since I’ve seen Eddie in a series, it was good to see him on screen again.

Melissa Yan Wai Ting – Rebecca Chan

A successful career woman who seemed to be in love with Martin. She didn’t re-marry after her first husband died. She is very smart, so she has high expectations of those around her. I felt bad for her when Martin betrayed her and she found out that he looked upon their long friendship so lightly. The character wasn’t overly developed so I don’t think Rebecca had to do much aside from look serious most of the time. I’ve never really seen her give a bad performance, so this one really wasn’t any different.

Catherine Shum Ji Tang – Florence Kwok
A rich woman who was forced to take charge of her brother's company when he passed away. She was a weak, pathetic woman who had little confidence in herself. She was there to come between Calvin and Sylvia to create the relationship square that they had with Sunny. I think her storyline really was just one of those things that made the series stretch to 82 episodes – it wasn’t entirely necessary. It’s odd seeing Florence play a weak character, she’s always playing those strong successful types. She did alright considering the character was a bit of a useless person.


Chemistry
Hong Family
None of them look anything alike, but they make for a pretty good looking family. Sylvia’s relationship with her parents was a little underdeveloped, but the relationship between the sisters was done very nicely. The end where the mother got dementia was very touching, and the effect that it had on the rest of the family was also sad to see. The servant, Ah Ying was also a nice addition – she always had words to add to a conversation even if they’re not the nicest of things. My favourite couple in the series would probably be the parents!

Bowie/Maggie/Kenny/Florence

Nice friendship between the four characters. It was great until it turned awkward with Sylvia marrying Sunny. Calvin and Sylvia started their relationship in a brilliant way – the one-liners were so good, and the courtship was so…sassy. It just all went downhill with the unnecessary love-square, and then Sylvia became a little needy. The very end was nice though, with the promise that Sylvia would wait for Calvin after he serves his jail-term. Maggie and Bowie have loads of chemistry, but Kenny and Maggie look so good together.

Elliot Yue/Ada

Despite the obvious age gap, I think they were pretty good together. The characters shared the same ideas and they cared a lot for each other. They even had chemistry and it was altogether believable. Throughout the middle, when Jessica went on a power trip, there were doubts whether she truly loved him, but at the very end you knew that she did. Ada was really cute and girly when she with him.

Moses/Gigi/Eddie

Moses and Gigi have cooperated before so they look pretty natural together. At the start of the series, I hated all three characters so it’s fair to say that the triangle didn’t interest me in the slightest. At the end, when I liked Eddie’s character, I was hoping that he would end up falling in love with someone else because he could do better than Constance. Plus, there wasn’t much chemistry between Eddie and Gigi.

Wong He/Linda Chung/Bosco Wong

A really odd triangle, although it wasn’t much of a triangle since none of them got past ‘liking’. There’s a bit of an age gap here with Linda and Wong He as well, but like Ada and Elliot Yue, I didn’t mind it at all. Wong He and Bosco were good as brothers, Bosco’s character was at his most decent when he was with his brother.

Chan Hung Lit and the wives
Chan Hung Lit and Helen Ma were fine together, believable as a long time married couple. Chan Hung Lit and Queenie Chu were also bearable, but Chan Hung Lit and Queena Chan just didn’t work at all. Queena Chan needs acting lessons and she really needs to learn how to speak naturally.

Overall
I wanted to make this review short and to the point, but I failed. With the huge amount of cast and 82 episodes, it just feels impossible to cut it down. I did like the series overall, but it was way too long. It’s so difficult to maintain that amount of focus for four months. The only other type of show that goes on this long is usually a soap opera, or TVB’s situation comedies, and they’re usually slower-paced or much lighter in theme. Gem Of Life was just go-go-go the whole way through, and it’s so easy to find your interest waning. I think had it been written as 40 episodes, it would have done better. The ratings weren’t so fantastic, although apparently it is partly due to High Definition ratings not being included. The last Chik Kei Yi series that was this long was At the Threshold of an Era, which also didn’t do well at the time but had many watchers during the reruns a few years later. I wonder if Gem of Life will have that kind of hype in a few years time?

The storyline had too much about business. It was confusing to follow the various take-overs and contracts that they were all negotiating and fighting for. The story and the anti-climactic ending spoilt the series, but the acting redeemed it. Disregarding the storyline, it was a stellar cast of veterans who I can’t sing enough praises about, even though I’m sounding like a broken record. There was so little that was wrong with it from the acting standpoint, which is so rare in today’s TVB series.

The inspiration for the Hong sisters was the famous Soong sisters from the early 20th century. It was said that "one loved money, one loved power and one loved China". I’m supposing Jessica loved money, Sylvia, being the workaholic, loved power and Constance would be the one who loved family (since it’s not a political series…)?

The ending. I’m unsure whether to call it a happy one or not. The very ending scene was a happy shot of the Hong family. Throughout the series though, the majority of the main characters did something ‘bad’ and the only one who gets any kind of retribution is Calvin, who would be heading to jail. The actual good guys, Shek Tai Wo and Sunny, end up going blind and in a coma respectively. Then all the fighting stops because everyone suddenly claims that they’re tired. It was all a little rushed and unexplained.

The themesong was sung by Shirley Kwan, and it was so very suitable. It sounded rich and grand, just like the grand setting of the series. The opening credits, however, were terrible. It looked messy and cheaply done.

The series was filmed at several overseas locations, and the scenery at some of the places was breathtaking. It’s obvious that quite a lot of money and effort was put into the series, as well as promotional events – did they over-hype it? The filming took over a year, the promoting began around the same time as the filming – I think they gave it way too much expectation to live up to.

And finally, one of the best things is the jewellery and diamond theme. Having worked in jewellery, I have a real fascination with the stuff and they had some really nice pieces on the show. Which you couldn’t forget was sponsored by MaBelle, since the word came up every ten minutes, which is OK, since I like MaBelle. But the glamour didn’t end with the jewellery; the clothes, cars and yachts were very high society. If nothing else, the series was really good to look at.

Rating
4 out of 5

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Catch Me Now [TVB]

Written by Joanne Lee




"It has been dubbed as an Oceans Eleven wannabe – It was a little Pirates of the Caribbean if anything."











SPOILERS ... SPOILERS ... SPOILERS

Chinese Title
原來愛上賊

Cantonese Name
Yuen Loi Ngoi Seung Chaak (Fallen in love with a thief)

Released In
2008

No. of Episodes
20

Cast
Damian Lau Chung Yan – Jack (Ko Jit)
Idy Chan Yuk Lin – Bao Yung Yung
Joe Ma Tak Jung – Gong Yeung
Fala Chen Faat Lai – Minnie (Hong Mei Lei)
Johnson Lee Si Jit – BT – Ben Tam (Tam Bun)
Sharon Chan Man Zhi – Gong Kiu
Koni Lui Wai Yee – Wong Ming Cheung
Aimee Chan Yan Mei – Nana (Sum On Na)
Eric Li Tin Cheung – Che Hei Sin
Lee Ka Sing – Yau Dai Hoi
Evergreen Mak Cheung Ching – Chiu Kwan Ho
Ai Wai – Keyman (Kwan Yan)

Summary
Damian leads a group of Robin-Hood style thieves who meet regularly on the pretense that they are a charity work group (Johnson Lee, Koni, Eric Li, Al Wai), and Joe Ma heads a group of police officers (Aimee Chan, Lee Ka Sing etc). When Damian first meets Joe, they get along, but once Joe realises that Damian may be part of a robbery gang who killed his mentor (Law Lok Lam), he is determined to find his crimes and arrest him. The two need to cooperate when Evergreen Mak sends killers after Damian, and again when there is an armed robbery at a jewellery store; they end up forming a friendship of sorts. They agree to disagree about their methods of work, but find that their general aim to take down the bad guys is the same.

Idy Chan is a housewife who has a husband who has been cheating on her. He makes sure she takes ‘vitamins’ on time (which are actually psychiatric medication), and helps her to book a body check-up. When he tells her that he will be divorcing her, he shows her that her results show psychiatric medication in her system and that the courts wouldn’t award her custody. He takes custody of their son and lets Idy see him once a week. Idy decides to move out of the house and she ends up renting a small place at Damian’s. Her ex-husband is later involved in crimes with Evergreen Mak.

Fala Chen is Joe Ma’s wife. They are very loving at the start of the series, but as cracks start to show, Fala inadvertently becomes close to Evergreen (the boss of her company). Sharon Chan is Joe’s sister, who becomes involved with Johnson Lee without knowing his thief identity.

Jack (Ko Jit)
When Jack was younger, he watched as the law was unable to punish the people who killed his parents in a building fire and he then decided to devote his life to bringing justice without having to go by the books. He believes in robbing from robbers and other evil rich people, and he believes in donating to charity and helping those in need. He is incredibly smart and takes care in planning, he also pays attention to detail (which you find out when he mentions that the first time he met Idy, she was wearing the same type of watch as an old one that he had that had meant a lot to him). The character is extremely likeable.

Damian Lau as Jack Ko
Damian was the highlight of the series. His facial expressions alone did much of the acting; he was serious when needed and hilarious during the comedic scenes. His eyes are just so incredibly expressive. You could definitely see him as the suave and admirable Jack. For his age he looks brilliant and for some reason I loved his hairdo. There was one small scene he had with Idy which was supposed to be funny (as the music suggested) that turned out kind of cheesy, but that is the only bad thing that I could say about him. The character is also much lighter than the one that Damian played in Drive of Life.

Bao Yung Yung
Bao Yung Yung is a naïve and trusting woman. She is kind hearted, optimistic, and simple. She often comes off as incredibly stupid, but then you realise that she’s actually just a little lost, not dumb. She has her moments to shine when she is dispensing advice or being an empathetic ear; she generally has a calming influence on people because of her caring nature (until she herself gets hysterical, in which case she gets quite hysterical indeed). Sometimes she was so annoyingly ‘C Lai’ – you could see that she didn’t know how to look at the big picture. I really liked the character, I thought she was sweet and cute. It is bizarre that she would have such a young child though.

Idy Chan as Yung Yung
This is Idy’s comeback series after a long layoff, and it shows. Her acting looks quite stiff and raw, and in her first few episodes she looks quite unattractive too. As the series went on, however, she got infinitely better and if she chose to film another series, I think she’ll do very well. It seems she was also intentionally made to look bad when she was first a housewife; she had bad hair (was it a wig?), less defined brows and minimal makeup. After the makeover, she looked much more attractive. She particularly impressed me when she was crying a river in the final episode.

I have noticed she has garnered quite abit of criticism for several things that I feel are unwarranted, so I’ll just jump to her defence for a minute.

“She looks old”
For someone who has been out of the limelight for so long, she hasn’t felt the need to spend thousands on upkeep like those who have stayed in the industry – she’s aging gracefully…and her skin is still enviable. The woman is pushing 50 – I don’t know why people still seem to expect her to look like ‘Little Dragon Girl’. Besides, she is paired up with Damian Lau! Any younger and it’d begin to look creepy.

“She is fat”
She isn’t the thinnest, but she is still of a decent shape. Anorexic is not the new black, and it most definitely never looks good on people of a certain age.

“Her voice is coarse and annoying”
I saw Idy being interviewed by Stephen Chan on ‘Be My Guest’ and her voice is much clearer. From what I’ve seen and read, on her first day of filming she spent the whole day screaming and shouting at her character’s ex-husband, and consequently lost her voice; she also developed a throat inflammation, and insisted on continuing so that she would not hold anybody up. Some of the scenes had to later be re-dubbed, which is why sometimes it sounds a little out of sync.

Gong Yeung
Gong Yeung is a dedicated policeman. He places his career first, which causes problems with his wife. He starts out by seeing the world as black and white, but gradually begins to realize that there are also many shades of grey between good and evil. Not as likeable as Damien’s character, but at least he isn’t dislikeable like the rest of his team.

Joe Ma as Gong Yeung
He was good, but he didn’t really need to do much. All his scenes were serious ones. It’s not so different from characters that he has previously played; Joe always looks good as a policeman.

Minnie Hong Mei Lei
Minnie is sweet and helpful. She is generally amicable, and a smart capable career woman. Later in the series, you see that she is also quite stubborn and rebellious. For a smart woman, she does make some really naïve choices and is extremely unreasonable when arguing with her husband, and after a while it got annoying as hell. However, all in all, she is a good character.

Fala Chen as Minnie
Fala Chen is constantly improving, but there is always room for more improvement. Her Cantonese is good, but sometimes there are parts where she says her lines awkwardly and without expression because it seems as though she’s concentrating hard on memorising the lines. I think that she is too young for her character, but nonetheless she wasn’t too bad. Her emotional scenes could do with a little more work.

The Thieves -BT, Wong Ming Cheung, Che Hei Sin, Keyman
BT (Ben Tam) – John Lee Si Jit
BT is a computer hacker and also Jack’s cousin. He is in charge of the technical aspects of the operations. He is also one of my favourite characters, and most of the comic relief came from him. He throws in random English words in his speech (and it’s funny seeing Damien answering in English every now and then to mock him) and he always likes to wear his black Michael Jackson-style hat. Johnson Lee was absolutely brilliant.

Wong Ming Cheung – Koni Lui Wai Yee
Nicknamed ‘Cheung Geuk Hai’ (Long legged crab), Wong Ming Cheung is a young aspiring actress. She is also a sharp shooter, and the firearms work belongs to her. The nickname is very apt as Koni does have incredibly long legs. I believe this is her first series, or at the very least one of her first, so I was impressed. She came off as natural, cute, and her lines weren’t delivered stiffly. It’s hard to tell whether she’ll be any good when given a different type of character, but for this one, she was good for a newcomer. Her emotional scenes could also do with a little work.

Che Hei Sin – Eric Li Tin Cheung
Nicknamed ‘Hao Lo’, he is the resident driver. He drives a taxi during the day, and he is the group’s mode of transport. He is married, but seems to be quite a metrosexual - I’m not sure I understand the white man-blouse with pink flowers. It’s good to see Eric Li in a ‘good’ role, he seems to gets playboy ones usually. I’m not a fan of facial hair at all, but I’ve never though Eric Li was good looking until I saw him here with facial hair. It looks great on him.

Keyman (Kwan Yan) – Ai Wai
As his name suggests, Keyman is the one who can unlock anything. Ai Wai is great, one of those versatile character actors who can act as anything. Like Eric Li, it is good to see him as a good character because he always gets stuck with the evil ones.


The Police: Nana (Sum On Na), Yau Dai Hoi
Nana – Aimee Chan Yan Mei
Nana is a newbie police officer who is extremely enthusiastic. She grew up overseas and always uses Cantonese phrases in the wrong context. The character wasn’t overly developed and I found her slightly irritating. Aimee wasn’t horrible, but as a newcomer I was more impressed with Koni. Aimee also needs to work on her pronounciation and diction too, she slurs all her words.

Yau Dai Hoi – Lee Ka Sing
Dai Hoi has a brash demeanour and doesn’t like to follow the rules completely. At first this clashes with Joe Ma, but over time they work well together. Why does Lee Ka Sing always get these cocky characters where he always has to look angry?


Gong Kiu – Sharon Chan
Gong Kiu is Joe Ma’s sister and eventually Johnson Lee’s girlfriend. She works with a security company. She has many scenes, but I didn’t find her storylines all that riveting. She was there to put more family with Joe, and also to give herself, Johnson Lee/Koni Lui a little bit of a love triangle, but aside from that, she seemed a little bit redundant. Sharon is a decent actress, but she didn’t do anything ground-breaking.

Chiu Kwan Ho – Evergreen Mak
Like Sharon, Evergreen was not groundbreaking. The character was just a typical villain who had some daddy issues. Evergreen is a character actor so it’s not often that he will churn out a bad performance, and this was no exception - but the character was just way too predictable.


Chemistry
The Robbers
A fresh combination of actors/actress, and it was a really good one. They seemed to be having a lot of fun, and having Koni as the only newcomer, with the other four as seasoned actors, it gave their scenes much more depth and definitely helped Koni to immerse herself into the scenes better. The five characters worked well together, and their own separate back stories and fully developed characters helped it along. Keyman and Jack in particular had a great deep friendship and they shared a few meaningful chats during the series. They all came off as playful and mischievous, and thoroughly likeable. You couldn’t help but cheer them on when they were faced up against the cops. Illegal activities or not, they are definitely the protagonists.

The Cops
Unlike the robbers, I found the characters very two dimensional and under developed. They gave Lee Ka Sing’s character some back story, and they paired him up with Aimee to make it more interesting, but aside from that they were very much cardboard cut-outs. The other cops were not given much to do, and several guys seemed to float around in the background not saying much more than “Yes Sir” and looking intense. The only one with more substance was Joe’s character, who had so many scenes with Damian and Fala that the police squad interaction was minimal. And when faced up against each other, the cops were the ones who seemed threatening and unreasonable whereas the robbers were just smiling and doing their own thing. There was one scene where Damien is catering for Joe’s farewell (Fala booked it, not knowing their history) and as he is smiling, being civil and trying to leave, the police were blocking his path, being rude and arrogant, and generally acting like gangsters. Only Joe remained calm, cool and civil. They all became painful to watch at times.

Damian and Idy
I thought they were cute, but much better in their casual scenes than their romantic deep-and-meaningful ones. Possibly partly due to the fact that Damian had laughingly mentioned in several interviews that Idy always refused to let him hold her hands! It was good that they didn’t rush into it, and because you knew that they would hook up (as the opening credits very clearly indicates) it happened nice and naturally. It has been said that Idy’s character is useless, but I felt that she was needed to further Damian’s character. Without an emotional attachment, Damian’s character is essentially flawless. Everything he plans to perfection and there is no way that the police would outsmart him. Idy’s character is needed to ‘humanise’ Damian more, to give him some conscience problems. I liked them together, but they really did get caught in some cheesy scenes that made you want to cringe just a tiny little bit.

Damian and Joe
They cooperated before on the Drive of Life, so they have managed to build up a good rapport. They’re great in their scenes together, whether it be the cop-talking-to-robber conversations, or the friend-to-friend ones. Joe’s character towards the end seemed much closer to Damian than to any of his police squad; if only the cops had such good chemistry.

Joe and Fala
An odd pairing, and I would be inclined to say slightly mismatched. Fala seems too young for Joe, and they looked a little uncomfortable together. I thought it was probably more Joe’s problem than Fala’s; Fala was cute and lovey but Joe looked so stiff in their scenes. It made it hard to sympathise with the couple when they started having problems, as they didn’t really capture my liking from the outset.

Idy and Fala
This is another reason that I think Fala was way too young for the character. Had she been in her thirties, I would have found this friendship a little better. There wasn’t too much wrong with it, they had a good rapport and you could believe that they had a friendship, but I just feel that it would have been better for Minnie to be someone a little older.

Johnson Lee/Sharon Chan/Koni Lui
I preferred Johnson with Koni. They were more playful; Sharon’s character always took too much of a moral high ground. It was cute that there was continuous height jokes aimed at Johnson, as Koni and Sharon are both very tall. The ending was sad for all three, but I do think it was a good way to go. I was quite sad at BT’s demise, but I think that was the point.


Overall
I loved it. The storyline was riveting and there was always something happening. It was fascinating watching the robbers doing dodgy business, the police and Damian’s crew both tapping the robber’s phones whilst the dodgy business is going on, and then watch Damian’s crew intercept the money while the police fruitless search the original robbers. Confusing as that might be. The robber gang absolutely made the series for me, their scenes were the sole stand outs. Idy was also good, but everyone else was really quite ordinary which is a shame, as the series could have been even better had more effort been put into the other characters.

It has been dubbed as an Oceans Eleven wannabe – I’m always very wary of HK series imitating anything Hollywood as lack of budget and time always end up making the HK series look cheap. Thankfully this was not similar enough to Ocean’s Eleven to make a good side by side comparison. It was a little Pirates of the Caribbean if anything. It also threw in masses of love stories to further distinguish itself, making it unique on its own.

I liked that the theme song was just a simple jazz tune. Singing would have ruined the atmosphere.

Apparently there were three versions of the ending filmed – they ended up choosing one as the proper ending, and they put one as an ‘alternate ending’ onto the website. I’m a sucker for a happily-ever-after, so I was quite upset that they chose for Damian to die as the official ending. And to be shot by a background police guy who seemingly pulled the trigger out of fear and incompetence? What a disappointment. The alternate ending had Evergreen being shot by the police before being able to shoot anybody else, and then Damian being arrested before finally reuniting with Idy in the sunset. That reuniting scene is the last one in the opening credits which is also why I was extremely surprised that he died because I didn’t think that they would put the scene in the opening credits if it wasn’t part of the actual series.

After the initial disappointment, I can see why Damian’s death is the ideal ending. Firstly, it was a little more shocking. A happy ending is way too predictable. Secondly, it made the end shooting (and the many angles that they took it from) much more interesting – Evergreen shot at Damian (who was saved by Evergreen’s father jumping in front of him and taking the bullet), Joe shot at Evergreen and the random policeman shot Damian. They showed all three standing in a line simultaneously being shot – it was brilliantly filmed. Idy delivered the same monologue to Damian in both the endings, but in one of them Damian is going to jail and in the other one, he is dying. The third ending is supposedly Damian being in PVS and I’m guessing Idy delivers the same dialogue. She does the monologue extremely well in the alternate ending; a little bit of a waste that it’s not the official ending. Nonetheless, good choice of official ending or not, it is sad in that the very last scene was the camera panning out, where we see Idy on the dock, alone.

It seems I’ve gotten carried away as this is a really really long review, but all in all a good series. And since storyline seems to be the most integral part, it’s probably not bad when dubbed into other languages too.

Rating
4 out of 5

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KIM MO TUK KU KAU PAI [TVB]

Written by Joanne Lee

"However a bunch of semi-main characters, the ‘good’ ones, were killed and/or tortured throughout the series. Something like 80% of anyone who mattered ended up dead. Good drama, yeah, but the death rate was unnecessarily high."

SPOILERS ... SPOILERS ... SPOILERS

Chinese Title
劍魔獨孤求敗

Released In
1989

Main Cast
Felix Wong Yat-Wah – Lam Hong
Maggie Shiu Mei-Kei – Lang Zhi Yin
Hugo Ng Doi-Yung – Baak Seng Jung
Law Lok Lam – Duk Ku Tin Fung
Lily Li Lai-Lai – Yim Hiu Ching
Man Suet Yee – Lau Ngo Seung
Carrie Choi Ka-Lei – Lau Ngo Suet
Gordon Liu Ka-Fai– Gung Zan Hung

Summary
Law Lok Lam is Duk Ku Tin Fung, who is regarded as the head of one of the ‘evil’ clans in the martial arts world. He and his pregnant (and going into labour) wife (Lily Li) get pursued by the ‘good’ clans and in desperation, Lily Li swaps her newborn baby with the newborn of a local peasant couple before she falls down a well and Law Lok Lam gets captured.

The baby grows up to become Lam Hong (Felix Wong), who is sweet, honest, and filial. Felix lives with his elderly mother in a small home and sells tofu for a living. Lang Zhi Yin (Maggie Shiu) is a disciple of Lily Li’s, and she becomes hurt on a mission and is saved and nursed back to health by Felix. They rather quickly fall in love and get married, but eventually Maggie knows she can’t avoid her former life so they part ways.

Felix is taken in by the father of Baak Seng Jung (Hugo Ng), who’s whole family then gets killed by Lily Li (obviously with the exception of Hugo and Felix, who escape by chance). Felix and Hugo then get taken in by Master Lau, and they befriend Master Lau’s two daughters Lau Ngo Seung (Man Suet Yee) and Lau Ngo Suet (Carrie Choi). Felix and Hugo secretly follow Master Lau to the mountains and discover that he is the one who captured Law Lok Lam all those years ago and kept him as prisoner. They help him to escape after requesting that he teaches them martial arts since Master Lau had only been getting them to do basic chore-like jobs. After escaping, Law Lok Lam refuses to teach them anything and then goes to seek revenge on Master Lau (unsuccessfully) before reuniting with his wife and her small band of followers.

Hugo eventually becomes impatient at taking so long to get revenge for his parents; misunderstandings and accusations ensue. He then grows to seek more than revenge; he wants martial arts dominance and will stop at nothing to get it. Meanwhile, Felix left Master Lau after copping some accusations and consequently having to openly save Maggie, a disciple of an ‘evil’ clan, after Master Lau had kidnapped and tortured her. Felix then took up with two new masters; they had retired from the martial arts world but were known to be highly skilled. They were also involved in abit of a quirky love triangle with the local healer, who had taken Man Suet Yee as a student after seeing her talent and dedication.

Master Lau’s eldest daughter (Man Suet Yee) chose to support Felix throughout the series, even when all evidence of a crime seemed to point to him. Hugo married the younger daughter (Carrie Choi) so he could become part of the Lau family, even though the one he had always loved was Man Suet Yee. He first, however, pretended to be the long lost son of Law Lok Lam and Lily Li, gaining their trust and powers. When the truth that Felix was the true son came to light, Hugo then claimed that he was only pretending to be the son so he could gather information and then attack the ‘evil’ clan from the inside. Felix, however, was then chased by all the ‘good’ clans for being the son of the evil and ruthless Law Lok Lam. Eventually the truth that Hugo was the one who had committed crimes came out and led to the final showdown between the two.

Performances rated
Felix Wong as Lam Hong
Lam Hong is helpful and nice to everybody. He is a hard worker and a quick learner. He also has a stubborn streak however, and he is completely on the good side for the fight against good and evil. Felix is the most ideal choice for this role. He was suitably nice and loveable at the beginning, and his gradual change into a powerful righteous young man was subtle and believable. Although I am curious to see Felix playing an evil role someday, don’t think that’s ever happened before.

Maggie Shiu as Lang Zhi Yin
Lang Zhi Yin is a cold-blooded murderer, but strangely enough, she would still be one of the protagonists in the series. She starts off going around killing random people, but partway through you realize that she’s been trained as a killing machine and she listens faithfully to her master because she’s so grateful that her master took her in and raised her. She was a great character, strong yet gentle, and quite understanding. Maggie, like Felix, was a good choice. She was impressive in Kim Mo, capturing the different facets of the character; however having watched some more recent series, I noticed that her acting abilities have actually further improved and grown since. She’s really young and beautiful in the series as well.

Hugo Ng as Baak Seng Jung
Baak Seng Jung is annoying and rude at first, a rather childish young man. Then he matures, gets much smarter and becomes downright evil; the scheming, sly type of evil. That is until the very end when he essentially goes insane. This may be the first series I’ve watched with Hugo as one of the leads, and he was excellent. At the beginning when it was a little lighter, his comic timing was spot on, and as it got more dramatic, he displayed a commanding intensity.

Law Lok Lam as Duk Ku Tin Fung
Duk Ku Tin Fung is one power-crazy man. He’s almost borderline insane sometimes, and incredibly ruthless. Law Lok Lam is a capable actor who’s been great in everything I’ve ever seen him in, particularly ancient series.

Lily Li as Yim Hiu Ching
She may be evil, but she cares deeply for Maggie as a disciple. That is until her husband turns up and continuously ‘tests’ and uses Maggie, and Lily does *nothing* to defend her faithful disciple. Sure, she brings her soup to aid Maggie’s recovery, but if she had defended her in the first place then maybe it wouldn’t have gotten so bad. But then I guess it is a little hard when her husband is crazy. And why was she so against Felix at the beginning, anyway? She had missed and loved her husband for so long, she should completely understand how Maggie was feeling. But then again…I did like the character in a strange kind of way; like Maggie, she also had her more gentle and caring moments. Lily Li is a veteran actress who honestly I find a little unappealing in modern series. She always strikes me as rather stiff and she says her lines in a robotic way. All of that is acceptable though, for an ancient series. Especially for her ‘evil’ character; I’ve always found evil characters in ancient series need to be a little dramatic in an ever so slightly comical way.

Man Suet Yee as Lau Ngo Seung
She is a sweet loving girl, and you could say that this makes her the perfect match to Felix. But somehow I find them too alike which isn’t really good for a couple. She is infinitely smarter and nicer than her sister though, which means she gives lots of advice throughout the series, all of which her sister doesn’t listen to. Man Suet Yee wasn’t bad, but the character didn’t have much depth. She was nice and all, but sometimes it seemed as if she was nice because she knew she should be, not because she truly wanted to be.

Other characters –
- Gordon Liu as Gung Zhan Hung – Gung Zhan Hung was another disciple of Lily Li, he was madly in love with Maggie, and quite open about it, but on the whole, he respected Maggie’s decisions and helped her whenever he could. He was another one of those ‘evil-but-good’ characters and his ending was rather unfortunate.

- Carrie Choi as Lau Ngo Suet – Carrie Choi was cute, but Lau Ngo Suet was highly annoying. Her character was gullible, disobedient, rather dimwitted and stubborn. She kind of deserved her ending.

- Felix’s two masters and the healer were very interesting characters. The two bickering masters provided most of the comic relief and it was done tastefully. The healer was clever and willing to help, understanding but also decisive and strong when she needed to be. They provided a good back-story when the main Hugo/Felix battle story needed a break.

- Master Lau has to be the dumbest character in the whole series. He, like his youngest daughter, was gullible and stubborn. He was also extremely arrogant, overconfident, selfish and greedy. He should have died way earlier in the series.

Comments
- How could Felix love Maggie *so* much and then instantly disown her and badmouth her when he found out she was from the ‘evil’ clan? He had seen her when she was good, and then when she constantly saved him, he never even thought that it was her.

- Throughout the series, they seem to really advocate the Felix/Man Suet Yee pairing. You almost get the feeling that they are implying that Maggie is the third party. Why? She married Felix first. Actually she’s the only one who married him at all.

- I’m not familiar with Jin Yong novels, so I had never heard of Duk Ku Kau Pai, but after having done some research, I do think they could, and probably should have strayed away from the typical 80s martial arts series mold and created something a little different…

- So why did they kill off Gordon? He was such a good character and such a great guy, he so didn’t deserve it.

- One point that they keep reiterating in the series is that bad people will have a bad ending. True as that might be, it seems as if good people also got the same ending. If not worse. I distinctly remember one man who became an accomplice to Hugo – he had his ear chopped off, and if I recall correctly, that was it. However a bunch of semi-main characters, the ‘good’ ones, were killed and/or tortured throughout the series. Something like 80% of anyone who mattered ended up dead. Good drama, yeah, but the death rate was unnecessarily high.

- Why did the two masters and the healer die? They were the epitome of good. They had retired from the martial arts world and were seeking to live a peaceful life. The second they half step back into it, they get embroiled in the mess and end up dead.

- The ending was a let down. It was so typical and so many people died towards the end. Maggie’s ending was incredibly disappointing; one minute they’re feeling her pulse and saying ‘she’s alive!’ and the next, she’s apparently not. And they didn’t even really specify, Felix and Man Suet Yee just had a small conversation about it and that was it. And they didn’t really seem upset at all, even Felix, who really should have been.

Overall
I don’t usually enjoy ancient wuxia series all that much, but one in a while isn’t so bad. The rating went down a little because of the ending. The ‘flow’ of it wasn’t so good either, some parts moved way too fast and some parts dragged on and on. But it was quite enjoyable on the whole once I got to the good parts.

Rating


Some screencaps

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The Dance of Passion [TVB]

Written by Joanne Lee

"On the whole, this is definitely a series I recommend, but not if you only like light hearted stuff because this definitely is not in that category."

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

Cantonese Name
For Mo Wong Sah

Number of Episodes
32

Main Cast
Bowie Lam Bo Yee – Yim Man Hei
Moses Chan Ho – Sung Dong Sing
Ada Choi Siu Fun – Jiu Yuk
Gigi Lai Ji – Gai Ming Fung
Charmaine Sheh Si Man – Ga Chun Fun
Maggie Shiu Mei Kei – Long Yuet
Kenny Wong Dak Bun – Sung Dong Yeung
Chan Hung Lit – Mao To
Chung King Fai – Yim Kwok Yip
Helen Ma Hoi Lun – Gwai Laan
Catherine Chow Ka Yee – Mao Siu Kam
Vince Wong Yin Ji – Yim Man Tin
Rebecca Chan Sau Ju – Yim Siu Hung

Summary
Set in the early-mid nineteen hundreds, Yim Ga Po is a small village in China, ruled by the Yim family (mainly Yim Man Hei (Bowie)). The Sung family also occupies the village, and they are essentially viewed by the Yim family as lazy and useless – but because the Yim family was aided by the Sung family many generations ago, the Yim family is bound by their ancestor’s wishes to always live in peace with the Sung family.

The plot is long and intricate, with many twists along the way, but the general theme is murder, revenge, climbing up the ladder of power, etc. The relationships between characters is just as complex as the plot, and so often you’re left wondering whether one character hates another or in actual fact loves them.

Much of the cast were also in War and Beauty, and comparisons were made even before filming began. The notable additions to Dance of Passion were Ada Choi and Maggie Shiu, and the absentees were Sheren Teng and Maggie Cheung HY. Personally, I really enjoyed Dance of Passion, more so than War and Beauty, although the latter achieved much higher ratings.

Acting / Characters
Yim Man Hei / Bowie Lam
At first you hate the Man Hei, and then as you watch further into the series, you almost feel bad for him because he tries so hard to help out Jiu Yuk out of the guilt of killing her son. The change seemed almost too fast – to go from a brutal heartless man to a caring and understanding one in such a short time. Bowie has always been a steady actor, and rarely will you see him give a bad performance. This was no exception – but it was rather unspectacular. Perhaps having seen him portraying this type of character before, his performance just comes as nothing really special.

Sung Dong Sing / Moses Chan
I found Dong Sing to be quite irritating on the whole. It was so often that he was stubborn and selfish, which caused trouble for those around him. He had heaps of chemistry with Charmaine, but their whole relationship just seemed so cliché that it just didn’t really manage to grab my attention. As a person, Moses seems like a really nice guy and I quite like watching him, but there’s something about the way he pronounces his words that sounds really unnatural. It’s almost as if he’s being over-careful with his pronunciation to make sure every word is clear, and it just ends up sounding weird.

Jiu Yuk / Ada Choi
Jiu Yuk was definitely one of my favourite characters. She had so many different faces, yet you could still see where her motives were for each one. She lived her life for her son, and after he was gone, she just felt like she had nothing left (although that child’s lack of acting ability made it hard for me to like him much). A very intelligent woman, she was quite cunning, but you could almost feel sorry for her because she hadn’t had a comfortable life at all. Ada would definitely not have been my first choice of casting, and I was very surprised when I first heard that she was cast as such a mature character. I had doubts that she could pull it off, but I thought she did a fabulous job. She gave off a very strong air of authority, and the way that she delivered her lines sounded suitably calm and steady. Unlike Charmaine who has played similar types of characters to Chun Fun in other series, I’ve never seen Ada as a character like Jiu Yuk, so it really made it a fresh experience.

Gai Ming Fung / Gigi Lai
Another character I found irritating. She was so stubborn in her ways, and her “friendship” with Chun Fun (Charmaine) seemed to revolve around Ming Fung telling Chun Fun how to live her life. Ming Fung always thought that Chun Fun was hard done by, but if Chun Fun was happy to live that way for the sake of causing no trouble, why didn’t Ming Fung just let her be? She seemed to think that being outspoken automatically made her correct, and biting your tongue in any situation meant weakness, even if that were really the appropriate action to be taken. She did learn to bite her tongue in the end, which was good, but it still didn’t make the character likeable for me. I’ve never particularly liked Gigi, but she was good as Ming Fung, she seemed very comfortable. Too bad I just hated the character too much to really enjoy the performance.

Ga Chun Fun / Charmaine Sheh
Most of the characters that Charmaine has portrayed in her career must be the same as Chun Fun. It is nothing new, it is nothing special. Chun Fun was timid and sweet, and written to be likeable. Charmaine was sweet, but it’s been done many times before so it wasn’t too exciting.

Long Yuet / Maggie Shiu
Long Yuet was another one of my favourites. She started out as a quiet, loving wife, and gradually (or maybe not so gradually) turned to the dark side. Her first evil deed was the killing of Gwai Lan (Helen Ma), which was to protect her beloved husband from finding out what his father was really like. And afterward, when she confessed to Jiu Yuk (Ada), she was crying uncontrollably and seemed very remorseful. After that, she seemed to go evil again and it just got worse and worse, until her very end. Which was so incredibly anti-climatic, and did no justice to her character. Maggie was very believable as the quiet wife, and she was believably mean as the demanding wife towards the end. Her crying scenes were fabulous and as always, she acts out so much with her eyes. I was surprised she was cast as a character that was meant to be kind of young, but she sure looks the part so it wasn’t a problem. She had heaps of chemistry with Kenny too.

Sung Dong Yeung / Kenny Wong
Dong Yeung’s stupidity could be so grating, but he was just a man who wanted a simple life and couldn’t understand all the politics behind everything. You had to feel sorry for him when he was being lied to or used, but his drinking and everything at the end was pretty stupid. Kenny is an actor I’ve always liked watching, despite only getting small roles in past series. I was very surprised to see his name in such a strong cast, and the opportunity has obviously done him a world of good considering how much more exposure he’s had since the series aired. I’m looking forward to seeing more screen time for him in the future.

Supporting Cast
These characters may not have had much screen time, and the actors are unlikely to have a huge fan base, but I thought it’d be appropriate to write about them anyway, and individually too, because they were all pretty good and very integral to the series.

Mao To / Chan Hung Lit
Chan Hung Lit was dressed so differently that he was almost unrecognizable – until you heard him speak. Mao To wasn’t a particularly exciting character, but I don’t think he was supposed to be. He did serve as somebody who Dong Sing (Moses) could talk to, and somebody who would give him advice, of which he rarely seemed to listen to.

Yim Kwok Yip / Chung King Fai
Not much screen time, but enough to make his presence felt. He matched Bowie quite well as father and son. Maybe because of his theatre background, Chung King Fai just speaks in a way that seems uncomfortable on television. The pauses are too long, and in odd places. It’s even stranger in modern series though.

Gwai Lan / Helen Ma
She was good as Gwai Lan, but I was surprised she got nailed so early in the series. I think it may have been around episode 9, so it wasn’t even a third of the way through. Anyway, she served as the evil influence early on, but when she resigned to forgetting revenge and resting, she got rested for good which I suppose was karma.

Mao Siu Kam / Catherine Chow
Siu Kam wasn’t likeable at all, but Catherine Chow was good. I applaud her for playing an “ugly” character too. I’d never noticed Catherine before, but since watching DOP, I’ve noticed her in quite a few older series.

Yim Man Tin / Vince Wong
Not a difficult character to play, so Vince did well, and he most definitely looked the part too. Yim Man Tin was a nice, helpful, quiet, but cowardly man, however he was likeable enough.

Yim Siu Hung / Rebecca Chan
Yim Siu Hung was the auntie of Man Hei (Bowie), meaning his father’s sister. His father had pushed her down the stairs, causing Siu Hung to spend her life in a wheel chair as a vegetable. Rebecca Chan has usually had bigger parts in series, and even if she was just a guest character, she’d have plenty of lines. I kept expecting her to suddenly start moving and talking, and it just never happened. Her facial expressions were good, but other than that she didn’t do anything else, literally.

Chemistry
Bowie and Ada
They didn’t get the joint storyline until nearer the end, and by then, Ada was trying to get revenge for her son’s death. The very end part where they’re about to be punished and they run away, is very touching. They matched quite well, despite never being a total ‘couple’.

Bowie and Gigi
Maybe because I found her character to be so cold, I never really felt the passion between these two. It was acceptable, but I wasn’t moved.

Moses and Charmaine
Great chemistry, but clichéd romance. They go together well, and you can feel the love.

Maggie and Kenny
They were lovely. You could feel how caring they were towards each other at the beginning, and when he found out she was pregnant, he drank himself to a stupor which was silly, but it meant he kind of felt he had let her down over the whole impotence thing. The ending was sweet, how he dreamt about their happier times together.

Gigi and Charmaine
Again, it was hard to feel the friendship with Gigi’s character there. It was nice to see that not everybody was trying to kill everybody else though.

Moses and Kenny
They were really good together, two rough boys who were the best of friends. I found their friendship much more genuine than the one shared between Gigi and Charmaine’s characters.

Ending
I liked it. Despite a lot of people saying it spoilt the whole thing, I thought it was appropriate. Despite my favourite characters all dying, the way that Jiu Yuk (Ada) had sacrificed herself was really effective, especially when Bowie (and the viewers) all thought that Ada came out of it alive and was caring for Bowie. I thought the very very end was unnecessary though – the part where the older Chun Fun walks through Yim Ga Po and sees all the other characters, back when they were living happily. It was great to finish with seeing my favourites alive again though.

I didn’t like the ending for Maggie and Kenny’s characters. It was just so anti-climatic, so nothing. Especially Kenny, who burnt his field and told Moses that he was going to keep going forward, run and keep running…and then he just ran away. And that was it. And it was a whole 3 episodes from the finale too.

Themesongs
I’m not a fan of Bowie’s singing, but the song did grow on me. I particularly like how it starts off as a three beat tune, and then goes off into a four beat when it gets more dramatic. The sub theme by Charmaine grew on me too, although I still don’t like her voice. The song itself is very lovely though.

Overall
I really enjoyed this series, despite there seeming to be quite a lot of negativity from viewers. It didn’t live up to the expectations that was placed onto it, which I thought were too high anyway. The plot got a little too complex in the middle, but other than that, I thought it flowed quite well. There were people complaining about it being too “yellow” – I don’t see why. It was set in a desert landscape, were they expecting it to be pink? The color went well with the atmosphere. On the whole, this is definitely a series I’d recommend, but not if you only like light hearted stuff because this definitely isn’t in that category.

Rating

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The Gentle Crackdown [TVB]

Written by Joanne Lee

"I actually thought that when he (Moses Chan) did more serious scenes towards the end, he didn't do them nearly as well as he did the comedic scenes."

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

Cantonese Title
Sau Choi Yu Jeuk Bing

Released In
2005

Number of Episodes
20

Main Cast
Sui Dong Lau - Moses Chan Ho
Sup Yee Mui - Niki Chow Lai Kei
Sup Yee Ma - Michelle Yim (Mai Suet)
Si Kei Wong - Wayne Lai Yiu Cheung
Luk Sau Gu - Halina Tam Siu Wan
Cameo - Sun Bo Luk Jin - Yuen Wah

Summary
Sui Dong Lau (Moses) is the judge who wants to rid corruption from the small town that he presides over. He uses unorthodox methods to achieve his aims, causing constant friction between himself and Sup Yee Mui (Niki). Sup Yee Mui's mother Sup Yee Ma (Michelle) is an ex-outlaw, who settled down when she got married, and never told her daughter of her past. Sup Yee Ma is constantly following her daughter around to protect her without her daughter knowing - and eventually this leads her to get hurt and Sup Yee Mui finds out the truth. All is forgiven, and during the series, many cases are tried and some comedic storylines are shown throughout the series. Towards the end of the series, Fei Ying is framed for stealing a royal object and Sup Yee Mui (Niki) and Sui Dong Lau (Moses) work to clear her name.



Sui Dong Lau
He is the new judge in town, who gradually tries to rid the corruption in the government officials (constables, etc). He's very intelligent and quite scheming. He usually tricks people into giving in, sometimes without them realising it. He faints at the most appropriate of times, but he does grow alot more serious towards the end of the series.

Moses Chan as Sui Dong Lau
I always thought of Moses as a person who could only play serious characters in modern series. His performance in this series surprised me very much - I didn't think he could play comedy so well! He was hilarious as Dong Lau, and I actually thought that when he did more serious scenes towards the end, he didn't do them nearly as well as he did the comedic scenes. And I loved how he kept fainting - there'd be a close-up of his head, and then suddenly he just dropped out of the camera's sight.

Sup Yee Mui
She has always looked up to her father Luk Jin (Yuen Wah) who was a famous constable - but he had passed away when Sup Yee Mui was young. She was raised by her mother Sup Yee Ma (Michelle Yim), and despite the fact that all her colleagues are corrupt, she strongly believes in justice and doing the right thing. She's stubborn, and very honest - so much so that she often doesn't realise when she's being lied to or tricked. She likes to do what she wants, and often doesn't listen to reason. She thought that her kung fu was very almighty, but later learns that it wasn't as good as she thought.

Niki Chow as Sup Yee Mui
She has improved since Hard Fate, and I'm a little surprised she's been given a leading role so soon - but she handled it well. Her character was very cute and lost throughout, but at the end, Sup Yee Mui got irritatingly unreasonable, often putting others at risk just for a little revenge - she didn't look at the big picture. Of course this wasn't a fault of Niki's - She portrayed the character well.

Sup Yee Ma
She used to be an infamous outlaw (Robin Hood type), Fei Ying - but she met and fell in love with constable Luk Jin (Yuen Wah), settled down and raised Sup Yee Mui (Niki). She pretended to be a simple housewife who knew nothing. She had never told her daughter about her identity as Fei Ying, because she knew her daughter would be angry and upset to know that her mother was an outlaw. She often followed Sup Yee Mui around to protect her because she knew her daughter's overconfidence in her own kung fu could sometimes get her into trouble.

Michelle Yim as Sup Yee Ma
Easily my favourite character and actress in the series. I love how she gave up her previous life as an outlaw to get married and raise a family. Michelle was adequately serious when she needed to be, and funny and lost when she needed to be as well. I always laughed when she rolled her eyes or made faces at her daughter's overconfidence or her daughter's ignorance. I remember seeing an interview where Michelle said that she is enjoying doing wirework - it's great to see an actress who loves to do her own stunts. I'm happy she had quite alot of screen time too - when she played the younger version of herself in flashbacks, she looked convincing-Michelle looks at least ten years younger than she is!

Si Kei Wong
The judge's assistant, who disliked Sui Dong Lau (Moses) at first because he thinks that all judges are corrupt. He thinks that he does all the work for the judges but the judges reap all the rewards. His mother raised him on her own, and he is extremely obedient to her. He dislikes Luk Sau Gu (Halina) at first because he hates people who gamble too much, but he later helps her in getting her son back from her divorced husband, and they end up falling for each other.

Wayne Lai as Si Kei Wong
No complaints at all. Wayne is such a versatile actor, and this series didn't disprove that. His comedic scenes had such spark but when he had to talk about cases and be series, he was also fantastic.

Luk Sau Gu
She gets divorced by her husband, who won't give her or let her see their son without charging her money. Her lucky streak leads her to develop a gambling problem, and when she asks for money to see her son, everybody thinks that she wants the money to gamble with. When it is revealed that it really is for her son, Si Kei Wong (Wayne) helps her out and ends up falling in love.

Halina Tam as Luk Sau Gu
They made the character out to be abit oldish, but I thought Halina still looked young. She can play comedy quite well - but some of her serious scenes were a little stiff. And she can play hysterical quite well too!

Minor characters
There are other constables that are throughout the show, the four main ones being Mo, Si, Sung, Fei. (In Cantonese, these four words put together roughly means "Create trouble out of nothing". Mo's father was a colleague of Sup Yee Mui's (Niki) father, and when Mo's father passed away on the job, Sup Yee Mui's father (Yuen Wah) vowed to care for ah Mo. Sup Yee Ma (Michelle) has always lived up to the promise, so Mo lives and grew up with Sup Yee Mui. Mo, Si, Sung and Fei originally follow Yiu Gong (the head constable), who is extremely corrupt. Towards the end they follow Tong Bo Tau, who is anti-corruption. Siu Choon is Sui's (Moses) servant, who has quite abit of screen time.

Chemistry
I thought that basically all the actors/actresses seemed quite comfortable with each other. Moses and Niki were great as a crime fighting pair, and they were cute at the end too. Michelle and Moses were so funny when they knew about the Fei Ying secret, but they were still keeping it from Niki. Yuen Wah was only a cameo and only appeared in a few flashbacks, but I loved the flashbacks with Michelle - you could just feel the love! Mo Si Sung Fei worked together perfectly, always in the background. There basically wasn't anybody at all who didn't seem to fit in.

Comments
I didn't intend to watch this series, it didn't appeal to me too much, but when I heard the theme song I decided to watch a little of it - and I was hooked after the first episode. It's a very light hearted comedy, which turns into a drama towards the end of the series - whilst still maintaining some comedic scenes. I didn't like the ending at all - the last episode was a little anti-climatic, and I thought the very very last part was unnecessary - but I suppose it is hard to wrap up a comedy because they can't exactly kill off any characters to make it dramatic. The veteran actors and actresses really stood out, and it was basically a very enjoyable series.

Rating

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Unbearable Heights [TVB]

Written by Joanne Lee

"So basically I thought it was a pretty entertaining hour and a half. Of course I had minor complaints, but they weren't major enough for me to dislike this. The whole thing is pretty much centred on Maggie Siu, and I enjoy watching her."

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

Type
Telemovie

Released In
2003

Cast
Maggie Siu - Ada
Bowie Lam - Joe
Sonija Kwok - Kimmy
Michael Tong - Patrick

Outline
Ada (Maggie) and Kimmy (Sonija) are air-hostess', and Joe (Bowie) is a passenger in first class. Patrick (Michael) is a passenger too, but he is also Ada's boyfriend. Joe is born with the ability to see things (kind of like flashes of the future), and he keeps seeing things like the plane having a bomb, blowing up etc. Ada on the other hand, doesn't really believe in fate, but rather that everything is earned and controlled by the individual. Kimmy and Patrick had known each other before, but they never told Ada.

The plane is then hi-jacked by terrorists, (partly how Joe predicted) and the last half of the movie is all about how the terrorists couldn't come to an agreement from the US president, and therefore has to choose a person on the plane to die.

Basic Opinion
The whole thing was only 90 minutes, so there really wasn't much time for character development or anything in-depth with the characters. It was mainly the plot, and all these small sub-plots to do with all these other passengers on the plane.

The story was a pretty new idea (or at least I wouldn't have thought of it) but there were quite a few clichés in the sub-plots I thought. And then some of the sub-plots were just plain boring/annoying. But the main story basically kept my attention the whole time.

Complaints
Something that really got me confused was the flashes between reality, and what Joe (Bowie) was seeing in the future. They just kind of mingled together, and they were filmed exactly the same (i.e. there wasn't any kind of cloudy stuff over the shot or anything, like dream sequences usually are, or black and white like flashbacks). A few times, I didn't realise it was a flashback until a while afterwards!

The ending was too preachy. I realise that TVB is trying to send out a message, but it was way too outright. There were probably ways they could have been much more subtle about telling the public to be good people.

I heard TVB actually spent a lot of money on this, because they actually bought the plane to film in. But then it came across as a really low budget telemovie because the only setting that you ever saw was the inside of a plane, and a few computer generated shots of a plane flying in some thunderclouds. And the inside of a plane looks a bit bland after 90 minutes.

Other Stuff
I'm thinking that this is classified a drama, but there sure was alot of comedy in it. But the crying probably classifies it as a drama, and plus plane hi-jacking really isn't a funny thing. But when the telemovie first started out, it filmed the plane and passengers from outside the plane windows, and then it suddenly had a close up of Ada on all fours looking for something, with Kimmy's voice in the background asking "What's wrong Ada? Did you trip over?". And another part I found amusing was when Ada had a dream that she kissed Joe. There was a gradual close up on Maggie's face, and then a flash of what she saw in the dream, and suddenly Maggie wakes up, her face scrunches into a frown and she starts to spit and cough and wipe her mouth (she didn't like Bowie's character at the time).

So basically I thought it was a pretty entertaining hour and a half. Of course I had minor complaints, but they weren't major enough for me to dislike this. The whole thing is pretty much centred on Maggie Siu, and I enjoy watching her.

Oh and another bonus. You should watch this if you're a Sonija or Maggie fan, because I thought they were so pretty in the pink outfits. And Sonija's acting improved quite abit, I didn't think she could pull off a crying scene like she did.

By the way, Sonija used to be an air-hostess, so she said that filming this was just like being back in her old job again.

Rating

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Find The Light [TVB]

Written by Joanne Lee

"I still think she (Maggie Siu) looks too young to be playing a mother of a twenty-something year old, and deserves to be the leading female."

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

Cantonese Name

Ying Hung Do Siu Lin



Released In

2003



Number of Episodes

20



Character-Cast

Wong Ng - Ron Ng Cheuk Hei

Tam Chi Tung - Bosco Wong Jung Chak

Chan Do Yeung - Damien Lau Chung Yan

Wong Yuen Sum Yi - Maggie Siu Mei Kei

Princess Cheuk Lan - Shirley Yeung Si Kei

Lee Kwai - Tavia Yeung Yi



Summary

Wong Ng's father died at a young age, and he never got to know him. Wong Ng was raised by his mother, Yuen Sum Yi, who had all her hopes on her only son, and spent every penny that she had saved, on his education. Wong Ng was a active young man, and after his tutor told his mother that Wong Ng didn't attend lessons, Wong Yuen Sum Yi decided to try and enroll him into a martial arts academy. A small misunderstanding sets up the first meeting of Wong Ng and Princess Cheuk Lan, and they dislike each other very much. Tam Chi Tung encounters Wong Ng and envies his simple life, as Tam Chi Tung's father is an official, and he expects Tam Chi Tung to follow in his footsteps, and also to get married in an arranged marriage. A misunderstanding sees that Tam Chi Tung hates his wife, Lee Kwai, and she only can approach him by assuming the identity of her maid. Chan Do Yeung teaches at the martial arts school, and eventually becomes the master of Wong Ng. Towards the end of the series, Chan Do Yeung pursues what he left behind decades ago, and pretty much drags all the characters into it some how.



Overall

Despite critics saying that this show doesn't have enough "star-power" to pull audiences, I think that the newcomers perform very much satisfactorily. The story is interesting to watch, with a good mix of drama and occasional comedy, and it definitely kept me interested until the end of the series. It's also very refreshing to see some new faces on the screen. In my opinion, nobody performed below what was expected, and I enjoyed watching this series very much. Definitely a thumbs up, and I'd recommend this series to anybody without question.





Wong Ng

His mother Wong Yuen Sum Yi (Maggie Siu) and his uncle Yuen Sum Yut (primarily his mother) raised Wong Ng. He lives his life as a simple poor commoner. He is loyal, direct, straight, and he lives by the simple principle of "If you respect me, I'll respect you. If you mess with me, I'll mess with you". After he becomes friends with Tam Chi Tung (Bosco Wong), and meets Princess Cheuk Lan (Shirley Yeung) and Chan Do Yeung (Damien Lau), his personality and views begin to change.



Ron Ng as Wong Ng

This is the first series that Ron took as a lead, and I was very impressed with his performance. His acting was very much up to standard as a TVB lead. I thought that he captured Wong Ng's determined look very well. One thing that he could probably improve on is by putting more expression into those large eyes of his. Although Bosco Wong's eyes aren't as big as Ron's, he was able to convey much more emotion in them.





Tam Chi Tung

He's father is a high-ranked official, who expects Tam Chi Tung to follow the same road in life. Tam Chi Tung doesn't mind being an official, but he longs for a simple carefree life like Wong Ng (Ron Ng). He objects to his father arranging a marriage for him to Lee Kwai (Tavia Yeung). A slight misunderstanding makes him dislike Lee Kwai, but eventually he comes to a compromise with his father regarding the marriage and his future.



Bosco Wong as Tam Chi Tung

Like Ron Ng, I was very happy with the performance of newcomer Bosco Wong. As I mentioned earlier, his eyes are very emotive (even though he wore glasses through most of the series). Although most people don't look good with the shaved head in Ching Dynasty style, I actually thought in some scenes Bosco looked better in ancient style than modern. Towards the later stages of the series, it was evident that Ron and Bosco weren't used to the grueling schedule of being a lead in a series, as they looked tired and black eye-bags were showing. To their credit though, they performed well throughout.





Chan Do Yeung

Chan Do Yeung is a man with unfinished business that he is reluctant to talk about. He once knew the father of Wong Ng (Ron Ng), and feels obliged to repay Wong Ng's father by taking Wong Ng as a pupil.



Damien Lau as Chan Do Yeung

As always, Damien has shown an excellent veteran performance, not that anything else was expected. He has this ability to just capture attention when he is on screen, I think he has such charisma. I can't really think of any faults that he had - in my opinion, Damien was a living, breathing Chan Do Yeung.





Wong Yuen Sum Yi

Wong Yuen Sum Yi became a widow when Wong Ng (Ron Ng) was just young, and she single-handedly raised her son. She is independent, and she likes helping others. Nothing is more important to her than her son, and she is willing to do anything for him to see him succeed in life.



Maggie Siu as Wong Yuen Sum Yi

As with Damien, Maggie was one of the veterans who lifted the series. I still think she looks too young to be playing a mother of a twenty-something year old, and deserves to be the leading female. But nonetheless, this character must have been a challenge for her, but she played it very well. Maggie convincing switched back and forth from a nice and innocent loving mother, to a stern mother who wanted her son to do as she asked. Thumbs up.





Princess Cheuk Lan

Princess Cheuk Lan is a Manchurian princess, who appears to her father as a gentle, sweet girl like a princess should be. Behind her father's back, Cheuk Lan secretly learns martial arts, and she loves to play around.



Shirley Yeung as Princess Cheuk Lan

This is the first series that I've seen Shirley in, and she seemed to fit her character well (although I think the character is not one that is extremely hard to play). Nonetheless, she was convincing as the playful princess, and I'm happy with that.



Lee Kwai

Lee Kwai is a traditional submissive woman. She is arranged to marry Tam Chi Tung (Bosco Wong) and she is disappointed when she finds that he dislikes her. However, towards the end of the series, she shows that she has a strong mind after all.



Tavia Yeung as Lee Kwai

The last time that I saw Tavia was in the W Files, and the character of Lee Kwai is very different from the one in W Files. I think this definitely showed that Tavia is capable of being a very versatile actress. I'll definitely be looking for future series with Tavia in them.



Couples

Wong Ng (Ron Ng) and Princess Cheuk Lan (Shirley Yeung)

For some reason, I thought that their chemistry when they were fighting and arguing was better than the chemistry that they had as a couple. The fact that these two were going to be a couple was pretty predictable, so I guess their story line didn't interest me all that much.



Tam Chi Tung (Bosco Wong) and Lee Kwai (Tavia Yeung)

At first I was interested to see how they would get together (as in fall in love, because they were already married). It was actually quite interesting…but then towards the end when they had some problems, I thought it was a little unreasonable. What Lee Kwai did was kind of out of

character, but I guess the writers felt they needed to split them up somehow.



Chan Do Yeung (Damien Lau) and Wong Yuen Sum Yi (Maggie Siu)

This is actually the couple that I found the most interesting, even though they are the older two, because it wasn't actually completely obvious from the start whether they would be together or not. They also seemed to carry much more meaning (eg their history, the fact that Damien knew Maggie's husband). Also, they were the 'comedy relief' couple, so it was really funny to watch their scenes together, even at the very beginning when they just met. Although Maggie Siu is more than 10 years younger than Damien Lau, I still thought they matched.



Minor Negatives - This is one thing that most TV series will have, and that is an overuse of coincidences. But I guess most of these can be justified as "fate" because they really believed in fate in ancient times.



- The veterans (with the exception of Damien) gained weight (which I guess is hard to avoid seeing they filmed in winter). It seemed a little unbelievable that Ben Ng's character had practiced martial arts daily, because he really had a large belly.



- The special effects aren't exactly striking. Much of it looks rather fake but I wasn't expecting anything too much, because it wasn't a big production series.



Rating

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