My ‘TVB Rant’ #8: Lamenting the lack of ‘good’ TVB series nowadays....

Over the years, as I've gotten older, watching TV has become a secondary pasttime for me -- meaning that the TV is still on all the time in the house (as it had been throughout my childhood), but instead of it consuming most of my time, it has now been reduced down to 'background noise' pretty much, taking a back seat to the other more important things / tasks that I have to do. Therefore, most of the time, even though the TV is on, I'm not truly 'watching' TV, but rather 'listening' to the TV, and I only look up occasionally from what I'm doing if there is a scene that happens to interest me, then after that scene passes, I quickly look back down and continue with the task at hand. So I guess you could say that I'm not really ‘paying attention’ to what is on TV, but rather focusing more on the task I am working on at the moment.

The above has pretty much become a way of life for me, but looking at it from a different perspective, it also helps me to gauge whether a particular TV series or show is 'good' or not.

In my book, in order for a series to be considered 'good', it has to meet 4 criteria.

First, a ‘good’ series must be able to "distract" me from what I am doing at the moment and cause me to ‘pay attention’ to the series for a long period of time. For a series to be considered 'really good', it has to do more than just "distract" me -- it has to cause me to set aside what I am doing at the moment and concentrate fully on what I am watching -- in other words, it has to pull me in to the point that what I am doing at the moment becomes secondary rather than primary. (Another way to look at is: ‘good’ is equivalent to ‘like’ and ‘really good’ is equivalent to ‘love’).

In addition to the above, the other way I can tell if a series is 'good' and/or 'really good' is whether it has the the 'chasability' factor. What is the 'chasability' factor, you may ask? Well, in Chinese, the word that we use is 追 (zui), which means 'to chase after' -- if you put 'zui' in front of the character for TV series, you get 'chase after TV series' -- which to me, has 2 meanings: 1) if the series airs at a certain time every day, then 'chasing the series' means that you don't want to miss a moment of it, so no matter what you are doing or where you are at, you always manage to get home in time to settle down in front of the TV and watch the next episode; or 2) if you are fortunate enough to own the entire series on DVD (my preferred method, since I like to be in control of my time and hate waiting day after day to watch 1 measly episode), then 'chasing the series' means that you can't stop watching the series and keep putting disc after disc into the DVD player and in the end, you finish watching the entire series in like 2 days (ok, 2 days might be an exaggeration -- though I've done it before -- but the point is that you finish the entire series in pretty much one sitting, however many days that may be).

Another criteria for me is that the series must be memorable in some way – now I don’t mean just being able to remember a character’s name or certain events that happen (though that’s certainly part of it)….when I say ‘memorable’, I mean that it had some type of impact on me to the point that even after I finish watching the entire series, I’m still thinking about the series (or certain parts of it) and perhaps wishing that it wasn’t over so quickly.

The last criteria is the “rewatchability” factor, which is basically – how likely am I to re-watch the series again? This is actually an important criteria for me because to be honest, if I am barely able to sit through the series the first time around (meaning I watch the first few episodes and am already bored out of my wits or I miss a few episodes and don’t even bother to rewatch what I missed), then that’s a sure-fire sign that I am most likely NOT going to waste my time rewatching the series again.

So in a nutshell, for me, there are 4 criteria for determining a 'good' (or 'really good') series -- it must 1) distract me from what I’m doing to the point that I really pay attention, 2) give me that 'chasable' feeling, 3) be memorable in some way (whether it’s character, storyline, or both), and last but not least, 4) be re-watchable.

You may be asking how all of this relates to TVB? Simple -- in the last decade or so, there have been very few TVB series that have met all 4 of my criteria for being a 'good' series (and even fewerhave made it into the 'really good' category)....in fact, in the last 7 years or so, it's gotten progressively worse, to the point that nowadays, I struggle to find even 1 or 2 series that are able to meet my criteria. In comparisons, back in the 80s and even part of the 90s, I could rattle off to you series after series that could EASILY fall into either category (‘good’ or ‘really good’). Also, just as a point of reference: I have watched most of the series from the 80s and early/mid 90s more than 1 time (and of course there are a select few that I have watched upwards of 20 times – and I’m not kidding!).

To illustrate my point, let’s takes the series from the past 3 years or so as examples….

Starting with 2010’s series -- out of all the series that TVB produced last year, the only two series that met all of my criteria were “Gun Metal Grey” (primarily because of Felix and Michael, though I ended up liking the series as a whole) and “No Regrets” (the acting was superb, even if parts of the storyline were a bit draggy -- well, when you’ve got Wayne and Sheren as the leads, it’s hard not to have awesome acting). Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that ALL the rest of the series that year ‘sucked’ (though a few of them did truly suck) – all I’m saying is that the other ones just didn’t quite cut it for me.

Looking at 2009’s series, the stats are even worse -- the only series that I liked out of the bunch (that met my 4 criteria) was “Rosy Business”. Even the series “Born Rich” – with it’s ‘dream’ cast consisting of many of my favorite actors and actresses from the 80s/90s – failed to make the cut because of its awful script and just plain boring storyline (I feel so sorry for the artists in that series – and yes, I’m still pissed at TVB for ‘ruining’ their careers).

2008’s series didn’t fare any better -- I liked “A Journey Called Life” and “Catch Me Now”, but to be honest, it was really a stretch – I had to think hard in order to get both series to fit all 4 criteria. Oh and don’t even get me started on the BIGGEST disappointment of 2008 – “Forensic Heroes 2” (basically, I went from loving the original FH in 2006 to absolutely hating the sequel…but I’ll save that rant for another post).

Going back one more year, to 2007 – “Fathers and Sons” was good and so was “Dicey Business” (both happen to be Bobby AuYeung series – love that guy!), but that was about it (though technically, “Dicey Business” started airing in 2006, so I guess you could say that it is really a 2006 series) – so in 2006, there were only 2 series I liked: DB and also the original “Forensic Heroes”.

And the list goes on…..(but I’m sure you get the picture by now, so I’ll stop the list here)….

So yes, I will reiterate the sentiment that I’ve carried for the past decade regarding TVB’s series nowadays – THEY SURE DON’T MAKE THEM LIKE THEY USED TO!!!

"Catch Me Now 原來愛上賊"

I just finished re-watching this series and I must say that the 2nd time around was even better than the first time! This is definitely one of my favorite series from the past 5 years (which says something about how good it is, since there are only a handful of series -- like less than 10 -- from the past 5 years that I actually like).

Again, the below is not exactly a review of the series, but rather just some random thoughts that came to mind about the series and its characters / storyline:

Of course, I was attracted to watching this series because of Damian Lau, since he is one of my favorite veteran actors and he never disappoints when it comes to his acting. I actually had high hopes for this series because I hated the previous series that Damian was in ("Drive of Life") and really wanted to see him in a likable role after the lame one in DOL. Well, I got what I wished for because his character in "Catch Me Now" (Jack Ko -- a modern-day 'Robin Hood') was awesome!! I think the reason why I liked the character so much is because he's very close to the way I've always pictured Damian in my mind all these years -- extremely smart and intelligent yet amazingly down to earth and humble, classy and suave but not condescending, cool but not arrogant, great sense of humor that borders on cynical but yet not offensive, displays the perfect amount of compassion and emotion (makes the character human) but not going overboard, a big brother who takes care of those who work for him as though they were family, someone who righteously stands up for what he believes in and fiercely stands by his principles but does so in a way that is not imposing and so easily gets 'buy-in' from those around him (I could actually go on and on with the description of his characteristics, but I'll stop here)....bottom line, I guess you could say the character is very similar to how Damian is in real life.

As much as I loved Damian's character in this series, I didn't like the pairing of him and Idy Chan. I know, TVB pretty much hyped up this series as the 'highly anticipated' comeback of 'Siu Loong Nu' but I really got to say that Idy's performance in the series was ‘disappointing’ at best. It's very obvious that she has been away from acting for a long time because her performance here really lacked emotion and was very wooden -- absolutely nothing like her performance in 'Return of the Condor Heroes', which at that time, bordered on legendary. From the beginning of the series when her character first appeared, I was already wondering what had happened to Idy's voice because it sounded so hoarse and whispy -- I thought that maybe she had a cold or something when she was filming those scenes and so figured that it would go away as the series went on....well, it didn't -- her voice was like that throughout the ENTIRE series, which annoyed me to no end because it was sort of distracting (at least for me). Also, her expressions seemed very forced and unnatural to me, which made her character very unappealing -- it was like she was trying to 're-learn' how to act all over again (and doing a poor job of it).

At first I didn't understand why Idy's acting turned so horrible all of a sudden, but after watching her interview on "Be My Guest", I was able to gain a somewhat better understanding -- apparently, in the years when Idy was less active in the industry, she had taken on a new religion -- I don't remember the name of the religion (though I'm sure it was NOT a 'mainstream' religion like Christianity or Buddhism) and don't want to say the wrong thing, so will leave it at that.....if I remember correctly, in adherence to the religion, she had committed to avoiding sexual desire (or something like that) so she had made it clear when she took on the role in "Catch Me Now" that she would not do any 'intimate' scenes (i.e.: kissing scenes, bedroom scenes, etc.). Of course, in a series, it's hard to completely avoid 'intimate' scenes altogether, especially if you're going to talk about a love relationship between a couple, so I think that's why in certain scenes that were 'somewhat intimate' (i.e.: hugging scenes), Idy came across as very stiff and unnatural (or perhaps it’s just been too long….don’t know)....

Anyway, I personally think that it was a bad decision for Idy to come back and do this series because it totally changed the audience's impression of her (and not for the better). The fact is that many HK viewers nowadays don't look at 'past history' when it comes to judging a person's acting skills and base their perception purely on how they perform in 'current' series (that's why the whole concept of 'veteran comebacks' are so dangerous -- but I'll save that for another post). I'm sure it would have probably been better for people to remember Idy as the 'perfect' Siu Loong Nu from "Return of the Condor Heroes" rather than the horribly acted 'see lai' character from "Catch Me Now". For me, I would have much preferred to see Damian's character paired up with someone else who was more 'worthy' of someone as 'perfect' as Jack Ko....

Moving on to some of the other characters in the series....

I have to say that I was quite impressed with Johnson Lee's performance in the series. Back when I first watched this series a couple years ago, Johnson was still a 'newbie' of sorts and the only other series I had seen him in was the sitcom "Welcome to the House" in which he played a nerdy computer genius (the stereotypical geek: glasses, eccentric personality, etc). Not knowing too much about him at that time, I was amazed at how he was able to play such an opposite character in this series (still a computer genius, but 'cool' and 'suave' rather than geeky) so well....of course, I'm not surprised now, knowing more about him and how talented he is. Also, I actually really liked the pairing of him and Sharon Chan in the series and felt that they complemented each other pretty well (except for the height of course) -- actually, I thought that they were a very cute couple, so I was a bit bummed when they broke up (though obviously they still had feelings for each other). Then, when Johnson's character died, it was even more sad, especially since they were so close to probably getting back together. I actually got teary-eyed during that part because Johnson's character was so endearing, yet they had to make him die so tragically (the fact that I got teary-eyed says something about how moving those scenes were, since very few TVB series are able to move me to tears nowadays -- especially the poorly made ones from recent years). As a sidenote, it's interesting that I didn't get teary-eyed when Damian's character died at the end of the series, yet I got so worked up when Johnson's character died. I think this is probably because with Damian's character, it was pretty much anticipated that he was going to die -- that would have been the only perfect ending for him...whereas with Johnson's character, it was very sudden and unexpected. (Plus I had watched the alternative ending for the series on TVB's website -- which was lame by the way -- and it sort of ruined the whole 'feel' of the ending for me)....

Another character worth mentioning is the villain played by Evergreen Mak. I like Evergreen -- he's definitely on my 'favorites' list in the supporting category. Though I've seen him play both 'good' and 'evil' roles, I actually don't prefer him as the villain because to me, he just doesn't look evil enough....ok, well, perhaps it's because of his chubby physical appearance for one and the fact that he also hosts children's programs on the side -- my image of him has always been of a big, cute teddy bear, so it's quite hard to imagine him as the evil villain....BUT, since he's convincing enough as the villain in this series, I'm totally ok with it (plus it shows his versatility as an actor). One of the things I liked about Evergreen's villain character in this series is that no matter how evil he became, he always showed piety and respect toward his Dad -- whose only goal in life was to get his son to repent from evil and get him back on the path to goodness. True, most of the time, Evergreen's character was 'nice' to his dad because he didn't want him to give away his inheritance money to charity, but there were times when he showed he truly cared (like that one time when the Dad and Jack came up with the plan to 'pretend' to be kidnapped and Evergreen would rather sacrifice ransom money and listen to instructions from the man he hated in order to 'save' his Dad). With that said though, I do have a little bit of a 'riff' with Evergreen's character in this series for killing Johnson's character, since I really liked his character (second only to Damian's character).....needless to say what happens to Evergreen's character in the end (the typical pattern with most villain characters in TVB series)....

Of course, there were alot more people in the cast that I didn't mention (primarily due to time constraints with writing this blog post). I won't go into each one, but I must mention that I especially liked the chemistry between Jack (Damian's character) and his 4 partners (BT, Long Legs, Key Man, and Car God) -- each had their own special skill and together as a team, they would rob the rich to give to charity. It was really fun to watch the entire team in action, constantly outsmarting the police (led by Joe Ma) and at certain points, even indirectly 'helping' them catch bad guys.

Overall, in terms of storyline and characters, this was a great series (with a few exceptions of course). The series is short (20 episodes) and to the point and it does a good job of incorporating suspense, action, drama, comedy, as well as romance together as an entire package. If I didn't already have a long list of series to watch/re-watch, I would definitely choose to re-watch this one again (I could just forward through Idy's parts next time -- the parts that are irrelevant to the main storyline, that is).