Interview with veteran TV actor Wilson Tsui: Finally ‘promoted’ to male lead

Here’s an interesting interview with another one of my long-time favorite veteran ‘green leaf’ actors (yes, I obviously have MANY of them) – Wilson Tsui.


Again, just like with many of the other veteran artists, I grew up watching Wilson in TVB series and to me, he has always been a solid actor. Interestingly enough, despite the more than 3 decades that he’s been with TVB, I really can’t remember too many of Wilson’s roles from the past decade – most of the roles that I remember most of his (and the ones that were most ‘impactful’) were from the 80s and 90s, which to me, shows how underutilized he was when he was the past few years especially.

And honestly, it’s truly sad that a talented actor has to work 33 years in order to get the chance to be a lead in a series when other so-called actors/actresses who can’t act to save their lives get to lead series almost immediately! (It’s the same situation with Wayne Lai, who was also mentioned in this interview – look at how long it took TVB to ‘recognize’ his talent? 20+ years!). When I hear stories like these, I can’t help but respect the dedication and passion that these artists have for their craft – I mean, unless you truly truly love what you do, how is it possible to continue persevering in such a harsh environment for 10, 15, 20, even 30 or 40 years without getting much in return? Most people would probably have quit and changed careers after 10 years if they were going absolutely nowhere in the environment they were in!

I’m not going to comment to much on the article as usual, since it pretty much speaks for itself – but one thing I do want to bring some attention to is the ‘unwritten rules’ part of the interview where Wilson describes how the decision to cast artists in particular roles generally falls into the hands of a few select people – he’s actually not the first one to talk about this, as there are quite a few other artists and behind-the-scenes people who’ve mentioned this in the past. (One of the more recent examples I can think of is former TVB scriptwriter Chow Yuk Ming revealing in a college seminar 2 years ago that TVB producers don’t always have a say in who gets cast in certain roles – even if the producer feels that a particular artist is ‘made’ for the role, they are sometimes ‘forced’ to use another less suitable artist for the role due to pressure from the higher ups…).

So basically, for those who were not sure if such ‘politics’ truly existed at TVB (or were unwilling to believe it before) – well, the answer is ‘yes’, such stuff actually does exist. Of course, TVB isn’t the only place where it happens and who’s to say that the same crap won’t happen in HKTV (CTI) in the future too once they become more established? All the more reason why there should be more TV stations in HK to provide more ‘options’ for not just us audiences, but also a ‘way out’ for artists like Wilson who can continue to do the job they like in an environment that’s better suited for them. I mean, honestly – people who work in every other occupation in HK have the ‘option’ to choose which company they would like to apply to and work for….why should TV actors/actresses in HK not have that same ‘right’??

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Interview with veteran TV actor Wilson Tsui:  Finally ‘promoted’ to male lead

Source:  HK Channel

Translation:  llwy12

There’s a Chinese saying that goes something like this: ‘A fish that experiences different ponds becomes more fertile.’


In the 33 years that he worked for TVB, veteran actor Wilson Tsui (艾威) was only considered a ‘several hundred dollar per show’ green leaf king – at most. But 4 months ago, when he decided to ‘jump out of the pond’ and join rival station HKTV (formerly CTI), his ‘worth’ immediately increased tenfold and with barely a need for convincing, he has finally achieved a position that eluded him for years: leading male actor.

Throughout the ‘making’ of television history in the past few decades, many people have had important roles – examples in the recent decade include Ricky Wong (王維基), Wayne Lai (黎耀祥), Lee Tim Sing (李添勝), etc. The great effort and ‘fighting spirit’ of people like them have been an inspiration to many of the ‘small workers’ who desire to strive for the best and continue to struggle their way up to the top. Wilson Tsui is precisely one of these ‘small workers’ who received such ‘enlightenment’ – the birth of a new TV station will hopefully become one of those ‘once in a thousand years’ opportunities that can give many ‘small workers’ in the industry new hope and a chance to realize their dreams.

Currently, with the first dawn of this new era, 57 year old Wilson Tsui is finally able to realize a dream – that of becoming a lead actor.


Waiting quietly for talent to be recognized

Having taken the time to dress up and prepare for the interview, Wilson had an especially cheerful aura about him, a rare feeling of happiness and satisfaction that he hadn’t experienced in a while. Towards his new work environment and new job position, Wilson has nothing but praise: “There’s less pressure, more space, and lots of freedom – I’m very satisfied with the environment I’m in right now. Even though many of the people I currently work with are old colleagues whom I’m already familiar with, many things have changed and it’s because of these changes that I’m finally able to reach the ‘first line’ level -- I firmly believe that if I had remained in the ‘old world’ [at TVB], it would have been impossible for this [getting a lead role] to happen. Today, the ‘transformation’ I’ve experienced can be considered a success, but if I hadn’t taken that step [leaving TVB], I know that I would never get the opportunity to climb to this position and never would have a breakthrough.”

The people may be the same, but Wilson himself has definitely changed. Getting to ‘taste’ the feeling of being a ‘leading actor’ for the first time, Wilson expressed: “In the past, I was a ‘border’-line artist: not first line, nor second line either, but rather ‘stuck’ on the border between second and third line – if I didn’t leave, that would have been my ‘fate’ at TVB forever. So to me, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity – of course my goal is to get to ‘first line’, but even if that doesn’t exactly happen, at least the effort was made and I was given the opportunity. I guess you could say that at the current moment, my ‘dream’ has been realized, since in the new series Three Sides of Shape Doctors (三面形醫), I get to be one of the main doctors alongside Frankie Lam (林文龍) and John Chiang (姜大偉) – it may not be the main leading role, but at least it’s a leading role.”

When he was little, Wilson and his family lived in a flat right above the Hollywood Theatre, so watching movies became one of his favorite past-times. Being a super movie fan since childhood, it’s no surprise that over the years, he cultivated an interest in acting; in 1978, Wilson was accepted to TVB’s Acting Class – his classmates that year include Kent Tong (湯鎮業) and Liu Kai Chi (廖啟智). Reflecting on his years at TVB, Wilson expressed that his ‘golden opportunity’ period was very short-lived: “When I filmed Plain Love (情濃大地) with Gallen Lo (羅嘉良) and Eddie Cheung (張兆輝), I played the main villain and the reaction [from audiences] was pretty good – not sure why the momentum didn’t continue on in later series. Perhaps I was just lacking a person who understood me and could recognize the potential -- you know, like how Wayne [Lai] had Tim Gor [producer Lee Tim Sing] – someone who understood and was willing to continue working with you until you made it to the top and everyone else recognized the talent too. I seemed to lack this type of supportive ‘partner’.”

With his passive and introverted personality, Wilson expressed that at one point, he ‘forced’ himself to accept the many ‘unwritten rules’ that exist in the TV industry, but in the end, things didn’t turn out favorable: “Some producers dislike artists who try to ‘sell’ themselves, so most of the time, others do the ‘selling’ for the artists. One time, I found out there was a character that the producer wanted to cast me in, but because some people who didn’t like me had an ‘opinion’ about it, I ended up losing the opportunity. At TVB, the decision of who gets to play what type of characters is usually controlled by a select few people and over time, it’s really these few people who ‘call all the shots’ – if your viewpoint happens to be different from these select few or they don’t know you that well, that’s how a lot of the opportunities could be lost.”


Ambitious, hopes to have a hand in creating a miracle

Looking at some of the TV industry ‘success’ stories from the past years, definitely causes one to reflect: CTI chairman Ricky Wong started his telecom business from scratch and after building it into a successful empire, decides to sell his ‘son’ [the telecom business] in order to start a new venture of building a TV station; Wayne Lai, who started off as an unknown ‘kelefe’ actor, worked hard for decades to refine his acting and eventually climbed his way to the top, becoming 3-time TV King; even ‘golden’ producer Lee Tim Sing, who started as a lowly worker in the props department, slowly worked his way up and at one point, even served as TVB’s Head Director of Production [back in the late 80s/early 90s]. For Wilson, these types of ‘success’ stories are a source of inspiration and part of the reason why he deeply believes that ‘miracles’ do happen: “It’s just like winning the lottery – with some luck and these types of inspirational stories, it’s definitely motivation for ‘small workers’ like me to want to work hard and advance to that level. Sure, some people may feel that I’m being too ambitious – after all, I don’t have the looks nor the qualifications, plus my age – with all the external factors, I know that people will laugh at me. Perhaps people may think that I can’t get to a high position, but just like any other consummate actor, all we hope for is being able to play a good character that has a deep impact on audiences. What types of roles have this impact? Usually the lead roles, as those are the roles that get you recognized and have the most opportunity for development. There’s no reason for me to put myself down and say that I can never get to that type of position – others can say that about me, no problem, but I should never say that about myself – it’s important to have confidence!”


Not afraid of getting on a ‘sinking boat’

Even with the issuance of new free TV licenses at a standstill currently, Wilson still gets his salary from HKTV on time every month -- however he still very much dissatisfied with the sluggish manner in which the government has handled the matter: “I’ve never been to a place where there is only one active TV station and the other one is just a ‘shell’ – and I thought HK was supposed to be an ‘international’ and modern city? The reality is, a television ‘revolution’ and the issuance of more licenses is inevitable if we want to catch up with the rest of the world. Hopefully the government is able to handle this matter in a harmonious manner. It’s not about ‘eliminating’ any particular TV station, but rather it’s a matter of responsibility on the part of the government to promote the growth of the TV industry -- they shouldn’t be waiting until there are so many complaints and criticisms to issue the licenses. Having more TV stations and opportunities is supposed to be a happy thing!”

With HKTV not having its license yet, there’s a ‘risk’ that the boat might sink – towards this, Wilson expressed: “It has never been a concern for me – I still do my job of filming series. I can tell you that the morale of all my colleagues over here is very high and everyone from top to bottom is very united.” With the infectious unity and positive spirit that the HKTV team possesses, it’s no wonder that even Wilson himself was ‘moved’ to personally attend HKTV’s promotional rallies to pass out fliers: “Production is truly taken very seriously here and our boss is very willing to spend whatever money is necessary to achieve high quality filming. Majority of the series are filmed in real locations and even if sets need to be built, they are all ‘working’ sets. For example, when filming Three Sides of Shape Doctors, $700,000 was spent building a medical clinic set at the Shing Fung Film Studio – all the faucets had actual running water, the computers were all real and capable of going online, and we were able to plug our I-phones into all the working outlets to charge! Earlier, for the series Hakka Women (客家女人), we traveled to MeiZhou (in Fukien, China) so we could film inside a real life Hakka village! Real location filming allows both the cast and crew to more fully immerse ourselves in the filming, which results in a very sincere, high quality production for audiences.”

News Article: Mingpao Special Feature: A career in review – looking back at TVB producer Lee Tim Sing’s Top 5 series

Here's a MUST READ article for 80s TVB fans (well, it sort of extends back to the 70s as well).

As most of you probably know, 'golden' producer Lee Tim Sing (李添勝) has plans to retire next year -- for the past 43 years, he has been responsible for producing many many TVB series, most of which we would consider 'classics'. With his anticipated retirement at the end of next year (as well as the recent success of his latest series "Bottled Passion"), Mingpao Weekly did a special feature on Lee Tim Sing, interviewing him about 5 of the top series he had produced in his career.

I'm sure that many old-school TVB fans have probably watched the 5 series discussed in this article at some point in their lives -- if so, here's some behind-the-scenes information about those series, as recounted by Tim Gor himself.

As an 80s/90s TVB fan (and the 70s to some extent), I definitely enjoyed reading this article! Whether you are a fan of TVB or not, if you've watched any of the 5 series mentioned, I hope that this article will help shed some light on things that perhaps were not previously known about the series.

Anyway, enjoy!! :-)

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Article originally published on January 7th, 2012

Mingpao Special Feature: A career in review – looking back at TVB producer Lee Tim Sing’s Top 5 series

Source: Mingpao Weekly, Issue 2252

Now that “Bottled Passion” has ended and his next series “Stairway to Heaven” is in post-production, TVB golden producer Lee Tim Sing (Tim Gor) has started preparing for his newest series “Detective Columbo” – actor Wayne Lai will star in this new series, which could very well be Tim Gor’s last production prior to retirement: “Unless something unexpected comes up, yes, this will most likely be the last one.” TV fans are surely hoping for something ‘unexpected’ to happen! After spending 4 decades in the industry, will Tim Gor miss the work? “It’s not really a matter of missing or not. I’m already 65 years old – it’s truly time for me to step down.”

With a career that spans 43 years and numerous hit series to his credit, Tim Gor does not wish to deliberately pick any one series as his ‘representative’ work: “I put my heart and soul into every single series I produce and each time, I strive to make the best series possible – though of course, it’s not always possible!” With limited production resources, of course it may not always be possible to achieve the best visual effects, however when it comes to choosing suitable actors and actresses for his series, Tim Gor certainly has an eye for talent. From a casting perspective, Tim Gor feels that “The Duke of Mount Deer” (1984) and “The Emissary” (1982) were ‘very close to perfection’, while classics such as “The Fate” (1981) and “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” (1979) had ‘golden couple’ Chow Yun Fat and Dodo (Carol) Cheng – two of his ‘beloved’ artists whom Tim Gor collaborated with often back in the day. Of course, the most ‘memorable’ experience for him was producing 1985’s grand anniversary series “The Yang’s Saga” in which every single artist employed by TVB at the time participated: “Back then, whenever we had a war to fight, everyone was invigorated!” [TN: the ‘war’ was between TVB and ATV: at that time, TVB produced the series to ‘fight’ ATV’s highly rated inaugural Miss Asia Beauty Pageant].

Looking at the state of TVB nowadays, does Tim Gor’s spirit and vitality still exist?


‘Close to perfect’ casting: Tony Leung (梁朝偉) and Andy Lau (劉德華) in “The Duke of Mount Deer” 《鹿鼎記》and “The Emissary” 《獵鷹》

In April of 1969, Lee Tim Sing joined TVB and was given the worker’s identification number of ‘365’ – perhaps it was fate that from that day forward, Tim Gor would work ‘365 days’ a year, every year, producing series for the small screen.

Having experienced the ‘golden era’ of TVB [back in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s] as a producer, it is of course difficult for Tim Gor not to lament TVB’s dire state today: “Back in the day, TVB truly had many great talents – in addition to the Five Tigers, there were also the more ‘mature’ actors such as Chow Yun Fat, Adam Cheng, Simon Yam, etc. – so in a sense, casting for series was easy!” A ‘classic’ example of this – TVB’s popular 1984 Jin Yong remake, “The Duke of Mount Deer”: “If at that time, our ‘artists vault’ did not consist of an actor named Tony Leung, the series definitely would have lost a lot of its vibrancy!” As Tim Gor describes it, Tony Leung’s portrayal of ‘Wai Siu Bo’ was akin to a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity – since then, the character has become ‘extinct’ so to speak: “When I had Jordan Chan (陳小春) play that role [in the 90s remake], it was a different feeling -- even Tony Leung himself, if he were to do the same role years later, would not be able to pull it off with the same freshness and purity as the original portrayal, since he would have gone through more experiences and his acting matured.”

Thinking back to that time, when TVB’s then Head of Production Lau Tin Chi (劉天賜) called Tim Gor into his office to give him the ‘marching orders’ to start production on “The Duke of Mount Deer”, Tim Gor’s first reaction was: “Ok, then Tony Leung will play Wai Siu Bo and Andy Lau will play Emperor Hong Hei!” Tim Gor revealed that the first time he cast Tony in one of his series was in 1982’s “The Emissary” – he did so primarily because Tony at that time was “a short, young boy who had a pleasant face and was obedient – the perfect fit to play Barbara Chan (陳敏兒)’s younger brother!” However, as filming of the series progressed, Tony’s meticulous acting and focus caused Tim Gor to see him in a new light: “Of course, when most audiences watch series, they will only pay attention to the main leads playing their roles in the front, but as a producer, I have to pay attention to those in the background as well. In “The Emissary”, Tony only played a supporting role and when [main leads] Andy and Barbara were playing their parts in the front, he would usually only be in the background – yet, the way he remained so focused and absorbed in the scene – it was obvious that in the future, that was the type of actor I wanted to work with; after all, who would want to work with a wandering spirit with no focus?”

Andy Lau’s situation was similar to Tony’s – the reason he got the ‘golden’ opportunity to be male lead in “The Emissary” was also because of his ‘background focus’: “In the series “The Lonely Hunter” (1981), there was a scene where a group of youth from the Acting Classes were cast as school students and had to perform the song ‘On the Songhua River’. I was in the control room and noticed that one of the students was especially enthusiastic and put 100% effort into performing that scene, so I asked my assistant to write down that student’s name. When it came time for me to start filming on “The Emissary” (in 1982), the first person that I thought about to play the lead role of a youngster from the police academy was that name I had written down: Andy Lau.”

Therefore, when it came time to film “The Duke of Mount Deer”, Tony and Andy were the first choice to play Wai Siu Bo and Emperor Hong Hei: “I would have to say that the casting for that series was close to perfection – even [veteran actor] Chun Wong playing the role of Mao Sap Bat was so well-suited!” The role that had the most ‘controversy’ at the time was Kiki Sheung playing ‘Ah Ngo’ – Tim Gor admits that back then, when he had decided to cast her in the role, there were definitely some people who objected: “As a producer, I cannot be wishy-washy – once the decision has been made, need to follow through with it. If I were to switch artists around all the time, not only would the artists themselves be unhappy, it would also affect the production. In addition to focusing on the quality of the series, I also need to be concerned with the artists’ feelings.” In deciding to cast Kiki for the role, Tim Gor states that her ‘obstinate’ personality was perfectly suited to the character: “If you say that Kiki is not pretty enough for the part, I probably wouldn’t refute you, but the character of Ah Ngo is the illegitimate daughter born out of wedlock to Chan Yuen Yuen and Lee Chi Sing and from childhood, was raised by a one-armed nun – based on her experiences, the character is supposed to have a self-determined, independent kind of stubbornness about her…Kiki definitely had this temperament that made her perfect for the role.”

In Jin Yong’s popular wuxia novels, anything is possible, however adapting the novels to the small screen is a challenge unto itself, both for the cast and crew alike. Tim Gor responds with a smile: “The scene where Wai Siu Bo finds the treasure was especially difficult to film, as there are limitations to what we are able to do in the studio. We did the best we could at the time, building a special set with an underground passage and tried to make the ‘treasure’ as realistic as we could….but of course, there will always be comparisons made! Look at all the Western films with those types of scenes – all the pillars, stones, etc. always look so grand – then take a look at ours…can’t compare!” When that scene was being filmed, Tim Gor had to give special instruction to the director to be careful with the camera angles and make the scene as short as possible: “No point in embarrassing ourselves!”

At this point in the interview, the scene in TVB’s recent anniversary series “Curse of the Royal Harem” where the Emperor and Empress are ‘riding’ in that makeshift balloon comes to mind….aiye….


Andy Lau and Deanie Ip’s mother/son relationship in “The Emissary”

In the 70s, TVB’s biggest competition was RTV [TN: Rediffusion Television, which later became ATV] and during that decade, a big focus for both stations was filming police dramas. After years of filming heavily male-oriented police investigative series, Lee Tim Sing (Tim Gor) suddenly had a thought – instead of filming regular police dramas, why not film a series about police cadets?: “Just like that, the series “The Emissary” was born!”

Prior to this series, Andy Lau did have some acting experience, however since this was his first time in a lead role, a bit of nervousness was unavoidable: “If you ask me whether Andy’s acting skills were always proficient, I would tell you ‘of course not!’ In the beginning, his acting was extremely stiff – my assistant would tell me: ‘that’s not going to work!’ to which I would reply: ‘give him a few more days and he’ll be fine!’” Tim Gor had a lot of confidence in Andy and very carefully helped him figure out where the problem was: “In times like that, you absolutely cannot yell at the actors because if you do, the situation becomes worse. Plus, at that time, it wasn’t completely Andy’s fault – during filming, there were a lot of people in the studio and it was quite noisy – unless you’re used to that type of filming environment, it’s difficult not to become slightly intimidated. As a producer, as long as you understand the circumstances, then it’s no big deal – the more at ease the artists are, the better the acting becomes. A few days later, when I bumped into Andy in the makeup room, I gave him a pat on the shoulder and told him: ‘You’ve been doing much better!’”

Of course, let’s not forget that Andy also had great ‘teachers’ to learn from, as other artists participating in the series included Deanie Ip (葉德嫻), Paul Chun (秦沛), Lau Kong (劉江), etc. – all of them were veteran artists who are known for their solid acting skills: “The veteran artists were very willing to help teach the younger artists at that time; after all, helping the younger artists was the same as helping themselves, since it meant everyone could get off work on time.” In real life, Deanie Ip and Andy Lau truly have a special ‘mother/son’ relationship and have remained close even now, 30 years later – with regard to Tim Gor’s role in bringing these two together, he states: “Actually, there really wasn’t any special reason why I decided to cast Deanie Ip in the series. My intention at the time was to create a very close-knit, unique mother/son relationship where the two of them could joke with each other and act like sister and brother rather than mother and son. I knew Deanie from years back, around 1972 or so, when I was still in an assistant (場務員) role and she was already singing in “Star Show” – later on, we got the chance to collaborate on a series – I remember that every time I saw her, I noticed that she was always smiling, so she was perfect for the ‘happy mother’ character I had in mind for “The Emissary”.”


‘Golden’ pairing of Chow Yun Fat (周潤發) and Dodo Cheng (鄭裕玲) in “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” 《網中人》and “The Fate” 《火鳳凰》

Talking about ‘classic’ collaborations – Tim Gor’s 1979 production “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” created the ‘golden’ pairing of Chow Yun Fat (Fat Jai) and Carol (Dodo) Cheng: “Chow Yun Fat’s acting skills are unquestionably great and Dodo is an actress I love collaborating with! I remember back when CTV (Commercial Television) closed down, TVB had bought a lot of that station’s series. One of my scriptwriters at the time told me I should go watch Dodo Cheng’s performance in those series – to be honest, in the past, what time would I have to check out CTV’s series?” [TN: Dodo Cheng started her television career at Commercial Television in the mid 70s – when CTV went bankrupt and TVB bought them out in 1978, she became a TVB artist].

As soon as Tim Gor saw Dodo’s performance, he knew immediately that she was a talented actress – but, how she ended up becoming part of the ‘golden pairing’ with Chow Yun Fat was partly due to fate and the right timing. As we all know, in the series “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”, Fat Jai was also paired up with actress Cora Miao (繆騫人) and part of the storyline revolved around which woman he would ultimately choose: “The original plan [for the storyline] was that when a man [Fat Jai’s character Cheng Wai] is faced with two women – one who is a perfect match for him in terms of background, education, and thought process and who he had once been in love with [Dodo’s character Fong Hei Mun] and the other who is his dream ‘goddess’ and who understands him well, takes care of him, and is very considerate of his thoughts and feelings [Cora’s character He Ying] – who will he ultimately choose?”

Before the writers had a chance to make a decision, fate already made the choice for ‘Cheng Wai’: “After Cora Miao resigned in the middle of filming the series, the answer was already obvious, as there was no other choice – Fat Jai will definitely be paired with Dodo in the end. Any other characters who were added as love interests after that (Susanna Au Yeung for example) were all ‘facades’ whose purpose was to ultimately bring Fat Jai and Dodo together and move their relationship forward.” Back when the series aired, TVB claimed to have received 200 letters from audiences on a daily basis complaining about ‘Cheng Wai’ being paired with a different love interest as well as requesting that he and ‘Fong Hei Mun’ reunite. When the pair did get back together in the finale, it appeared that TVB had complied with the audiences wishes, but in reality, Tim Gor already had that ending in mind long ago: “Actually, as soon as He Ying was written out of the script [the character died in a car accident], the storyline of Cheng Wai ultimately getting back together with Fong Hei Mun was already set. When Cora quit, we had to ‘give up’ a lot of the storyline that we had originally planned for her – for instance, we had written that George Lam (林子祥)’s character was originally going to fight Cheng Wai for He Ying, but in the end, his character was forced to ‘disappear’. With much of the storyline gone, there was a huge hole that we had to fill and on such short notice, it was not feasible to switch over artists who were currently filming other series, so in the end, we picked Susanna Au Yeung (歐陽佩珊).” When Tim Gor asked for Susanna’s help to participate in the series, he was very up front with her: “It was necessary to be honest from the start that her character (Au Hui Wah) was ultimately going to die – I told her that it was definitely unfair to her and I felt sorry having to wrong her like that, but since we lost Cora, we really didn’t have much choice.”

In the end, Susanna’s character is killed while trying to save Cheng Wai and his mother and later on, he gets back together with Fong Hei Mun – the series ends with the famous ‘last scene’ where Fat Jai and Dodo kiss for close to 35 seconds, which at that time, was billed as the ‘marathon kiss of the century’: “We never planned the timing of the kiss itself – my only request during filming was that the cart pushing the camera do one full circle. The cart had to be pushed slowly because if it went too fast, the cameraman would get upset – after practicing the speed a few times, we did the official take with Fat Jai and Dodo…we finished in one take.” Why not film a few more takes so that there would be more options to choose from? “Camera film was expensive in those days: it cost almost a dollar a foot, and that didn’t include printing and developing – if you film too many excess scenes, the company didn’t like it!”

The ratings for the series went through the roof and there was also much praise from the audiences. However, there were a few audiences who questioned a few aspects of the storyline: “Some people complained that it didn’t make sense for Fat Jai’s character to ruin his career and life by stealing $100,000 in order to help his mother [played by the late Tang Bik Wan (鄧碧雲)], as he could have easily borrowed that money. When I heard that complaint, I was puzzled – why would someone go borrow $100,000 from someone else for no good reason, especially considering that was the year 1979?” At the time, there were also complaints that Liu Wai Hung (廖偉雄)’s character Cheng Chan eating 30 hamburgers in one shot was unreasonable, to which Tim Gor responded: “Yes, I understand that it is difficult for an ordinary person to eat 30 hamburgers all at once, but the purpose of that scene was to show how foolish and ridiculous the character’s thought process was as well as demonstrate the concept of new immigrants wanting to try Western trends [eating a hamburger].” Indeed, the character of ‘Cheng Chan’ had a huge effect on HK audiences and even helped to coin the phrase ‘Ah Chan’ as a nickname for new immigrants settling in HK from Mainland China: “During that time, it was common for HK people to go back to visit their ancestral relatives in the villages and oftentimes, they would exaggerate how HK was a ‘land of gold’, which caused a lot of Mainlanders to come here illegally. I basically ‘borrowed’ the idea after listening to several brothers from the village tell their stories and based the character on this. As for why we chose the name ‘Ah Chan’ – well, that was due to a lot of the stereotypical nicknames that were prevalent in our old society.”

While “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” reflected the struggles of ordinary citizens trying to survive everyday life, Tim Gor’s series “The Fate”《火鳳凰》reflected a different type of struggle – one on a more psychological and emotional level involving the upper eschelons of society. Once again, Chow Yun Fat and Dodo Cheng were paired together – was this arranged by the company given the couple’s popularity from earlier? “No – the most important thing for me is the character and how suited the artist is to portray the role. The main character in “The Fate” is the adopted son of a former triad king and starting from the first scene, there are already scenes involving his background – when it comes to portraying ‘grassroots’ characters, Fat Jai definitely has a knack for it!”

Dodo’s character in the series is the daughter of a rich lawyer, so in order to emphasize the importance of her family’s background, Tim Gor specially purchased a real leather sofa worth ten thousand dollars (remember, this is back in 1981) to use as part of the setting for the scenes involving her home: “Of course, the company complained about the expense, but from my perspective, the family is affluent and in order to match the background and storyline, it made sense to have an expensive sofa – would you expect them to have a sofa made from cheap fabric in their home? Besides, I only bought that one piece of furniture!” Tim Gor was persistent, but it paid off: “Sure, I got yelled at a little, but I don’t care – as long as I’m able to put the investment to good use and it pays off, those people will stop complaining.”


Filming grand production anniversary series “The Yang’s Saga” 《楊家將》

In 1985, the ‘golden couple’ of Chow Yun Fat and Dodo Cheng was taken to a different level – both became ‘deities’! In the grand anniversary series “The Yang’s Saga”, Fat Jai played Lui Dong Bun and Dodo played Ho Sin Gu [TN: historical characters], however both roles were only cameos that they agreed to do to help the company [TVB] fight a war: “At the time, the ratings for flagship program EYT had dropped drastically (and the company had to battle ATV’s Miss Asia pageant finals) – in order to fight back, the company ordered that all their resources be utilized for a grand production and filming had to commence 10 days from the order being handed down. Back then, the organization and structure of the company was strong – as soon as the order was received, we notified the Artists department and they immediately posted letters to all the artists’ lockers letting them know to be prepared. Artists such as Fat Jai, Dodo, Maggie [Cheung] all had series that they were currently filming, so they were asked to return for 1 or 2 days only to film cameo roles as ‘deities’. The director at that time was Johnnie To (杜琪峰) and he asked me how deities were supposed to appear, as it’s not ‘realistic’ to have them just walk out – after some thought, I realized he was right. The result was that we created a precedent by utilizing 18 wires all at once to have all the deities ‘fly’ out in the first scene of the series!”

The reason why the historical story of the Yangs was chosen for this series was primarily due to the short timeframe with which the series needed to be filmed and released: “If we had done a modern series instead, we would have had to spend too much time explaining the story to audiences and promotion of the series would be too strenuous – however as soon as we say “The Yang’s Saga”, everyone already knows the story.” With the popularity of the 5 Tigers at the time, it made sense that they would be recruited to play major roles in the production: “Michael Miu, Felix Wong, Andy Lau, and Tony Leung were arranged to play the roles of the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th Yang brothers, all of whom carried much of the storyline – the personalities and mannerisms fit perfectly.” (Kent Tong did not participate because he was on hiatus due to Barbara Yung’s passing).

In the studio, everyone was originally in high spirits and ready to fight the battle, however after filming nonstop for a few days without any sleep, the situation became a bit volatile: “Everyone hadn’t slept for days, many people were in bad moods, and people were complaining. Johnnie To was pretty much yelling at people left and right – if the crew did their jobs quickly, then of course everything would be fine, but if they slowed down a little bit, then he would get upset and yell. At this point, I had no choice but to be the mediator and help settle things.” But Tim Gor also was filming without rest, right along with them: “Yes, but if I got upset too, we’d be dead! I had to keep the big picture into consideration.”

Tim Gor is definitely deserving of the title ‘natural born leader’!

Review of TVB series “Bottled Passion 我的如意狼君” (2011)

Cast (partial list of the main & supporting cast): Raymond Wong (黃浩然), Niki Chow (周麗淇), Elaine Yiu (姚子羚), Jack Wu (胡諾言), Rebecca Chan (陳秀珠), Katy Kung (龔嘉欣), Eric Li (李天翔), Joel Chan (陳山聰), Raymond Cho (曹永廉), Claire Yiu (姚嘉妮), Ching Hor Wai (程可為), Samuel Kwok Fung (郭峰), Vin Choi (蔡淇俊)


I will admit that I had doubts about watching this series at first because I’m not too keen on Niki Chow as an actress and since she is the female lead in this series, I wasn’t sure how things would turn out -- plus I'm not a fan of Elaine or Katy either (their acting has always fallen in the ‘tolerable’ category for me). However, I decided to go ahead and give the series a try primarily because of 3 reasons: 1) I’ve always liked Raymond Wong (male lead in this series) as an actor plus I like majority of the supporting cast, so I figured even if I don’t like the female leads, the rest of the cast would make up for it (and I was right to some extent); 2) I knew this was produced by Lee Tim Sing (which means there will be a certain level of quality to it) – plus Tim Gor is usually quite involved when it comes to writing the scripts for his series and I’ve enjoyed many of the series he has done in the past, so that gave me more confidence that this would be a decent series at least; and 3) the ‘pre-modern’ genre of this series is one of my favorite genres.

I’m actually very glad that I decided to give this series a chance because it turns out that I ended up LOVING this series (I know, it’s hard to believe given how particular I am with series nowadays). In fact, this is such a great series and I enjoyed it so much that it has officially become my absolute favorite series of 2011 (as well as one of my all-time favorite series from the entire decade)! To be quite honest, it has been years since I’ve encountered a series that took me on such an emotional roller coaster as this one: majority of the series made me cry (literally went through an entire box of tissues!) while some of the scenes made me laugh and others made me angry – still others had me sitting on the edge of my seat in anticipation of what was going to happen next (the suspense factor)….very few of TVB’s series in the recent decade have been able to balance all these elements so well in 1 series (usually, 1 or more of the elements is sacrificed), which is part of what made this series so memorable and awesome.

Before I go further, just a word of warning…this review will most likely be quite long, as I enjoyed this series so much that it had sort of become an ‘obsession’ of mine lately (LOL) and so obviously I have a lot to say about it…..therefore, to those willing to spare time reading this review, I sincerely thank you in advance!

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STORYLINE / SCRIPT

Normally, when doing a series review, I would talk about the cast and characters first, since most of my thoughts regarding the storyline / script will usually become apparent in the discussion about the cast. But for this particular review, I felt it was appropriate to talk about the script first because in my opinion, the absolutely well-written script and engaging storyline were amongst the biggest reasons (in addition to the fine acting from majority of the cast) why this series was so enjoyable and successful on many levels. I definitely have to applaud the scriptwriting team for putting together such a great script (and of course, part of the credit goes to producer Lee Tim Sing as well, since he always plays a huge part in writing of the scripts with all the series he produces).

One of the (many) things I like most about the script / storyline is the way the love story between Raymond Wong and Niki Chow’s characters was written (more on this piece later). I like how their relationship in the first half of the series is not the 'obvious' love relationship thing that TVB is so famous for doing, but rather, a more 'subtle romance' approach that really drives up the emotional factor. Indeed, in my opinion, the beauty of this series is in the ‘subtleness’ of the script – there were quite a few scenes where the dialogue was replaced by simple actions by the actors (hand gestures, body language, facial expressions, etc.) that in and of itself, already conveyed a wealth of emotion. With that said however, the important thing is that the writers / producer did a great job of keeping the ‘subtleness’ balanced throughout the series – meaning that they were careful to include just enough of it to keep the emotional level high, but didn’t overuse it (there were other parts of the script that were similar in style like this). Now don’t get me wrong – the careful dialogue was just as important and there was definitely a lot of it in this series -- in fact, there were many memorable lines in my opinion that really contributed to the overall effectiveness of the script.

As the article from Nan Fong Daily News stated so well, one of the biggest attractions of this series is the way the producer Tim Gor handles the storyline / script: “the plot is fast-paced and the story-telling effect is strong, which often evokes in audiences the desire to ‘chase’ each episode – each time, he incorporates just enough ‘tension’ in the series to draw audiences in and the more they watch, the more ‘flavorful’ the series gets.” This quote absolutely suits this series almost perfectly, as I can honestly say that the way the script was written and the series was produced, there wasn’t a single boring scene in this series -- from the moment I watched the first episode all the way up through the tragic finale, I was absolutely hooked! Normally, in most series, even the ones I like, I usually will find some scenes boring or draggy – but that was not the case here…every minute of this series was absolutely worthwhile (to the point that I felt like this series flew by way too quickly).

Now of course, the script wasn’t perfect by any means (no script ever is) and this one definitely had some flaws (the ending itself is a bit contentious, but more on that later) – however this script overall was definitely one of the best that I have seen in years! Once again, great job to the writers and to Tim Gor for such a wonderful script / storyline!


CAST / CHARACTERS

This series absolutely proves that you don’t need to have an ‘all star’ cast in a series to make it successful and accepted by audiences! Even though this series did not have any ‘big name’ artists in it (well, what most people today would consider ‘big name’ anyway), the cast was definitely strong in terms of acting, as most of the cast were truly high caliber actors and actresses who were able to carry this series extremely well with their brilliant acting. It’s rare to have a series where almost every artist who participated pulled off their roles extremely well, to the point that it’s actually hard for me to choose a favorite character in this series because all of them did such fine jobs and there were so many of them that I liked, especially on the male side (though if I truly had to choose, my top picks would be Raymond Wong’s Tung Boon Sin, Eric Li’s Law Yat, Jack Wu’s Dr Yuen, and Raymond Cho’s Tsui Ping).

The other thing that I really enjoyed about the casting in the series (and part of what made this series so great in my opinion) was the awesome chemistry that existed consistently throughout the entire series – not just in terms of the romantic pairing (between Raymond and Niki), but also in the other areas as well (such as the relationship between Niki and her family, the friendships between Raymond and Eric as well as between Niki and Jack, etc.). I truly believe that one of the most important things in a series is the chemistry of its cast and this series definitely illustrated that all across the board. One of the reasons why this series moved me so emotionally (in addition to the script and the acting) was because the chemistry came across so genuine that I truly felt a connection to each of the characters and when things happened to them, I truly felt for them.

Anyway, here’s my take on each of the characters and the artists’ performances:

Raymond Wong (Tung Boon Sin / Lee Ho) – Raymond’s character is actually quite complex. His real name is Lee Ho and when he was 8 years old, he was adopted from an orphanage and therefore had to separate from his childhood friend Ngau Nai Tong whom he was very close with and took care of, since she was crippled. Little did he know that the couple who adopted him did so as part of a plot by Dong Kwok Hing (played by Rebecca Chan), who was planning to use the child to deceive her husband Ko Siu Tong (played by Kwok Fung) so that he would stop looking for the illegitimate child he had with another woman. Afterwards, when the plan falls through and Lee Ho is kicked out of the house, Dong Kwok Hing tries to kill him by pushing him into a ravine so that her husband would never find out she was behind the plan. Amazingly, Lee Ho survived and later ends up in Nanjing, where he has to rely on deceiving people and performing magic tricks in order to make a living. He encounters a kind elderly man, Uncle Shek, who is the butler to a wealthy family – Uncle Shek becomes like a father to Lee Ho and when the master of the house Mr. Tung and his young son dies, Lee Ho takes on the identity of the young master Tung Boon Sin. Using this identity, he returns to Guangzhou to take revenge against Dong Kwok Hing and the entire Ko family for what was done to him as a child. As part of his plan to ruin the Ko family, he deceives Ko Yee Kiu (played by Elaine Yiu) into falling in love with him while at the same time, pretends to make a play at her younger sister Yee Nga (played by Katy Kung) so that the sisters would hate each other. Yee Kiu falls into his trap and ends up losing everything she has – plus the rest of the family gets the punishment they deserve as well. During this process, Tung Boon Sin meets Tsui Sum (played by Niki Chow) and decides to use her as part of his revenge plan, since the Ko family was interested in the land that her family’s soy sauce factory was built on – however he never anticipated that he would actually fall in love with her. Later on, he finds out that Tsui Sum is actually the childhood friend that he had been looking for over the past 20 years. Most of the series from this point pretty much revolves around Tung Boon Sin’s revenge against the Ko family as well as his relationship with Tsui Sum. Even though the character of Tung Boon Sin is billed as a ‘bad guy’ of sorts because of what he does to the Ko family (especially the innocent Yee Kiu), he’s actually a good guy at heart, it’s just that his suffering as a child caused him to want revenge.

Raymond Wong did an EXCELLENT job in the role of Tung Boon Sin -- his performance in this series was absolutely amazing and convincing! Tim Gor once said in an interview that Raymond was well-suited for the role of Tung Boon Sin – well, I would actually venture to say that he wasn’t just ‘well-suited’ for the role, he was actually PERFECT for it! It’s obvious that Raymond put a lot of effort into the role, as his acting in the series was so METICULOUS -- from the first time his character appeared in episode 1 all the way to his tragic end in episode 21….every facial expression, hand gesture, even the crying scenes were all absolutely well-executed, to the point that I truly felt he was the one carrying the whole Boon Sin / Tsui Sum storyline and it’s really because of his fine acting that all those scenes between him and Niki were so emotional (for me at least). Also, I never realized it before, but those eyes of his sure can act! The wealth of emotion that Raymond conveyed with his eyes – whether it’s anger, happiness, playfulness, sadness, etc. – was so amazing, it definitely was difficult not to be drawn in to his character in the series. Raymond definitely deserves a lot of credit for making the character of Tung Boon Sin SO MEMORABLE!

Even though Raymond has been in the industry for a long time, I never really knew much about him until he joined TVB a few years ago. I watched most of the TVB series that he was in prior to this one and even though I liked his performances and always viewed him as a solid, talented actor, I didn’t realize his true potential until now. I absolutely loved Raymond in this series – his performance impressed me so much that I’ve become somewhat of a ‘fan’ now and am definitely looking forward to future performances from him!


Niki Chow (Tsui Sum / Ngau Nai Tong) – Niki’s character Tsui Sum is the adopted daughter of the Tsui family (though this fact is not revealed until halfway through the series) who takes on overseeing the family’s soy sauce factory after her (adopted) father dies. She has a strong-willed personality (which makes sense given that she has to oversee an entire factory), but at the same time, she also has a kind and compassionate heart. When Tung Boon Sin first enters her life, she is moved by his story of his childhood friend Ngau Nai Tong, whom he has been waiting for 20 years to be reunited with and even tries to help him find her. Not surprisingly, Tsui Sum is smitten by Boon Sin’s charm and even falls for him after he repeatedly helps bail her family out of trouble. He persuades her to sign over the rights to her family’s soy sauce factory to him, hoping that he would be able to save the factory from demise, but he ends up selling the factory to the Ko family as part of his revenge plot. When Tsui Sum finds out that the person she trusted with all her heart was deceiving her all along, she is devastated -- but with the help of her family and the doctor friend (played by Jack Wu) she meets at the hospital, she eventually overcomes the pain and starts anew rebuilding the soy sauce factory (that is, until she and Boon Sin cross paths again). Without going into detail, of course Tsui Sum and Boon Sin eventually become a couple, but the twists and turns that occur in between is truly what makes their love story so poignant and memorable.

Contrary to popular opinion, I actually think that Niki did a decent job in this series. Sure, her acting wasn’t great by any means, but it wasn’t horrible either – I actually did not get as annoyed with her performance in here as I have been in her past series. The problem I’ve always had with Niki’s acting in the past is that she’s too wooden at times, which makes her acting look forced – plus she has a certain intonation in her voice which sometimes makes it sound like she is reading the dialogue rather than reciting it, which is why her acting always comes across as very unnatural to me. That being said though, I will say that she has improved A LOT in this series because even though she still had the same problems (yes, I was able to detect it right away), it was not as pronounced as in previous series. And I have to admit that Niki does crying scenes way better than most of the actresses at TVB nowadays (it’s kind of ironic that I find Niki’s crying scenes quite natural and convincing, but her acting overall doesn’t have the same effect).

I think that overall, the reason why I found her character tolerable was because of the chemistry that Niki had with Raymond Wong in this series – I actually enjoyed almost every single scene that the 2 of them had together. Perhaps because of Raymond’s great acting in this series, he was able to bring out the best in Niki because I felt that each time the 2 of them interacted in a scene, the emotional impact was very high. I actually think that NIki and Raymond make a great onscreen couple – for me, this was one of the best pairings that I’ve seen in years!


Jack Wu (Yuen Yau Hin) – Jack plays an established young doctor who actually turns out to be the illegitimate son that Ko Siu Tong (Samuel Kwok)had been looking for and eventually found. He’s a very kind-hearted person whose main goal in life is to be a good doctor and help as many people as possible. Though he and his father reunited many years ago, he does not want his father to acknowledge him publicly because he has no interest whatsoever in the Ko family fortune or their business. However, due to various things that happen, he eventually returns to the Ko family and helps out with the business. He meets Tsui Sum (Niki Chow) after she becomes his patient at the hospital where he works and he helps her through the illness that was brought on by Boon Sin’s deception. Even when he returns to help take care of the Ko family business, he still continues his ‘job’ as the Tsui family doctor. The two of them end up developing a life-long friendship. Also, he is pretty much the only good person in the entire Ko family.

Jack Wu has always been one of those actors whom I’ve found to be extremely underrated. He’s quite solid in terms of his acting skills and I’ve always found his performances consistent and likable. In the past, I always felt like Jack was typecasted into those ‘boy next door’ type roles -- perhaps because of his boyish looks -- and never really given a chance to play more mature, ‘professional’ roles much. That’s why I feel that Tim Gor made the right choice to cast Jack in this series as Dr Yuen because the character is quite different from the roles that he used to play in the past and it gives Jack a chance to show his acting skill. Of course, he still needs a little bit of polish in the role, but overall, he put in a fine performance!


Eric Li (Law Yat) – Eric plays Tung Boon Sin’s best friend Law Yat who is also his ‘partner’ in helping him carry out his revenge plans. His role is more behind the scenes, as he does a lot of investigative work for Boon Sin and reports back his findings, then, based on this, the two of them plan out their next moves. The reason why Law Yat is so devoted to helping Boon Sin is because he saved his life a long time ago, so he swore he would follow him from that moment on. The unique thing about Law Yat and Boon Sin’s relationship is the great chemistry between the two – they understand each other so well that oftentimes, they seem to know what the other is thinking and they are able to execute their plans effectively. The bond that these two share is unique and their relationship is similar to that of brothers rather than simply friends, which becomes more obvious as the series progresses (especially in the last few episodes when Boon Sin’s life is in danger). Law Yat has a playful personality, but when it comes to helping Boon Sin execute his plans, he takes his responsibilities very seriously – once the serious discussions are over however, Law Yat never passes up the chance to ‘tease’ Boon Sin about Tsui Sum. I love watching these two interact – the ‘teasing’ scenes between these two are especially hilarious and provide a welcome comedic respite from the otherwise serious / tragic nature of the series.

I was thoroughly impressed with Eric’s performance in this series! His portrayal of Law Yat was so well-executed and natural, I couldn’t help finding his character endearing and charming. Actually, this isn’t the first time that Eric has pulled off an impressive performance, but unfortunately, most of the roles he’s had in the past were insignificant ones where he never really got a chance to showcase his talent, plus he was mostly typecasted into minor villain roles as well (most audiences probably recognize Eric for his villain roles). His role in this particular series was probably one of the first ‘meatier’ non-villain roles he was given and without a doubt, he absolutely excelled in it!

I actually read up a little bit on Eric after watching this series and was surprised to find out that he has actually been in the industry since the mid-90s – he actually graduated from TVB’s Acting Class in 1995 and has been in numerous TVB productions since then (another actor who has toiled at TVB for numerous years without much recognition). Boy, I really hope that TVB gives him more significant supporting roles to play rather than the usual ‘villain x or y’ because it’s obvious that he has good acting skills and great potential (come on now, he’s 100x better than those Mr. HKs that TVB keeps putting into their series!).


Rebecca Chan (Dong Kwok Hing) – Rebecca played the role of the main ‘villanness’ in the series, Dong Kwok Hing. She is the matriarch of the Ko family and has a significant amount of ‘clout’ because she came from a well-to-do family and her husband Ko Siu Tong (Samuel Kwok) was able to build his business based in large part on funds provided by her family. She and Siu Tong have 3 children: oldest son Yee Tai (played by Joel Chan), second daughter Yee Kiu (played by Elaine Yiu), and youngest daughter Yee Nga (played by Katy Kung). The best way to describe Dong Kwok Hing is that she is a ‘control freak’ -- ever since her children were little, she has always ruled them with an iron fist, arranging every aspect of their lives from where/when they should go to school to whom they should marry. Also, she spends a lot of her time trying to make her children seem like ‘model children’ in front of their father by hiding anything bad that they do from him, primarily because she is afraid that if he found out, he would cut the children off from any future inheritance. Dong Kwok Hing is actually a very important character in the series because it’s really because of her scheming and her actions that trigger the whole revenge thing with Tung Boon Sin and pretty much becomes the catalyst for everything else that happens in the series.

Once again, Rebecca did an excellent job as the villain character (seems like she’s been doing more and more villain roles in the past several years). Of course, as a veteran artist, it’s no surprise that her acting would be great – with her level of experience, she has pretty much mastered the skills when it comes to executing her role well. Not sure how many people notice, but whenever Rebecca does villain roles, she does the facial expressions extremely well, especially with the eyes (the way she stares menacingly at people with those piercing eyes can be quite scary). With that said, she is still able to play the benevolent mother roles well too – now that’s versatile acting! It’s interesting how Rebecca has come a long way from TVB fa dan in the 80s to top villainess in the current era. I grew up watching her series and even when she was a fa dan, I always felt that she looked more mature than most of the other fa dans at the time (though she wasn’t really that much older). Anyway, another great performance from a veteran!


Elaine Yiu (Ko Yee Kiu) – Elaine’s character Yee Kiu is the oldest daughter in the Ko family. She’s quite smart, but because of the way she is raised, she is constantly under her mother’s controlling shadow. On the surface, she is obedient to her mother and does whatever she is told to do, even if it means that she must marry a man she doesn’t love in order to further the business relationship between the 2 families – however, inside, she really hates the way her mother tries to control them. Because she wants so desperately to get out from under her mother’s control, she tries to win her dad’s favor by succeeding with the family business, so throughout most of the series, she is battling her older brother Yee Tai to gain the upper hand in the business. She meets Tung Boon Sin during a business transaction and though impressed by him, she doesn’t get involved with him because she is engaged already. However, as the series progresses and she gets more and more frustrated with her mother’s controlling nature (plus her dad doesn’t appreciate her efforts with the family business), she eventually falls for Boon Sin’s charms and starts dating him behind her fiance’s back (which is all part of Boon Sin’s plan, though unbeknownst to her of course). In the end, under Boon Sin’s encouragement, she defies her mother and breaks up with her fiancé (causing him to commit suicide)…after giving up everything she has and running away from home, she discovers that all along the whole thing was a setup – Boon Sin never loved her and was pretty much ‘playing’ her the entire time as part of his revenge plan to destroy the Ko family.

To my surprise, I was actually quite impressed with Elaine’s acting in this series. I haven’t seen a whole lot of her series in the past, but the ones that I have seen I was not impressed with, so I wasn’t really expecting much from her going into this series. I was pleasantly surprised though to see how much more mature her acting has become – with many of the emotional scenes involving herself and Raymond as well as the ‘showdown’ scenes between her and Rebecca, she was able to deliver consistently. In fact, in that one episode especially where Yee Kiu defies her mother and runs away from home, only to find the letter that Boon Seen leaves for her telling her the whole thing was a setup – all of the scenes were done so well by Elaine that I truly felt sorry for her character...when she read the letter, I could sense her pain! Also, that last scene in the finale where her character Yee Kiu seeks out Raymond’s character Boon Seen at the office and stabs him was actually quite well-acted. Great improvement for Elaine!


Raymond Cho (Tsui Ping) -- Raymond Cho plays Tsui Sum (Niki)’s older brother Tsui Ping. He is a very honest and upright person who is not good at making decisions and doesn’t really have much of an opinion on anything, however, he has a heart of gold. Even though he is the oldest son, he knows that with his somewhat shy personality, he’s not suited to manage the family’s soy sauce factory, so he’s perfectly fine with his sister overseeing it. He prefers to live a simple and happy life and let the other women in his life (his wife, sister, and mother) make all the decisions for him – in a sense, he has a ‘happy-go-luck’ type personality. One of Tsui Ping’s best qualities is his unwavering devotion to his family, especially to his little sister Tsui Sum – other than his mother, he is the only one who knows Tsui Sum’s true identity, but that doesn’t prevent him from treating her as his biological sister. The way he loves his sister so much and tries to protect her at all costs is truly very touching and sweet!

Ray Cho never fails to impress me with his acting! No matter what type of role he gets – whether serious, comedic, villain, etc. – he always handles the role extremely well. The character of Tsui Ping may not be a major character in the series and compared to the others, he may not have as much screentime, but his role was still very endearing and enjoyable. I loved all those scenes he had with Niki where the two of them would have their heart-to-heart brother/sister talks as well as those scenes where he would be so concerned for his sister’s well-being that he would be on the verge of tears (moved me to tears as well). Ray’s character (as well as his performance) was definitely among one of my favorites!


Additional Cast:

Claire Yiu (Tsui Ping’s wife Wan Yau) – As Tsui Ping’s wife, she is loud and bossy (in a nice way) with a blunt personality and a bit nosy too, but underneath all that, she actually has a good heart. In fact, her character was quite funny and enjoyable in this series. I especially loved her interaction with her ‘husband’ in the series, Ray Cho – they sure make a compatible, cute couple in my opinion…LOL!

Ching Hor Wai (Mrs. Tsui) – Her character is pretty much the typical ‘benevolent mother’ role, except that she ends up having an illness similar to Alzheimers and slowly starts to lose her memory. Even though her role can be considered minor in comparisons to the others (I think she probably has the least amount of screentime), her character is critical in being the one who knows the background of Tsui Sum’s childhood and eventually revealing those details to Boon Sin. Ching Hor Wai gives her usual steady performance in here.

Katy Kung (Ko Yee Nga) – Katy plays the youngest of the Ko daughters and is actually the one who deserves most to meet a miserable fate in my opinion. Her character is bxxchy and incorrigible – at home, she pretends to be a good girl to win her parents favor, but outside, she shows her true colors as a promiscuous teenager who smokes and has a nasty, arrogant temper. Knowing her personality and temper, Boon Sin purposefully leads her into thinking that he likes her when he actually doesn’t and this causes her to be at odds with her sister Yee Kiu. Later on, when she finds out that Boon Sin’s true love is actually Tsui Sum, Yee Nga gets jealous and ends up pushing her down a cliff – the incident causes Tsui Sum to once again become crippled. Obviously I disliked Katy’s character – she was just way too annoying and fake (and it’s unfortunate that she ended up getting off scott-free thanks to her mother, continuing to live her wild life in another city)!

Joel Chan (Ko Yee Tai) – Joel actually portrayed his role quite well in this series, but since I’ve never really been fond of him as an actor, I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to him in here. Besides, his character had more of a significance in the first few episodes of the series during the whole battle over the soy sauce factory and stuff –later on, he pretty much just follows his mother around and does whatever she tells him to do.

Samuel Kwok (Ko Siu Tong) – I’m actually kind of disappointed that Kwok Fung didn’t have a more significant role in this series, especially given that he is the patriarch of the Ko family. I sort of felt like all he did pretty much was just appear every so often to chide his children and his wife whenever something bad happened in his family. The two scenes where he had the most significance were in the announcement of Yuen Yau Hin as his son and also when he officially disowns his oldest son and sends his wife away after he discovers the nasty things that they did. For such a great veteran actor, too bad his role was less significant.

Tracy Ip (Ko Yee Tai’s wife Bak Wai) – Her performance is probably the only one that I really didn’t like -- her acting came across too robotic and fake to me and it seemed that she had difficulty saying her lines (perhaps because of her slight accent?). Anyway, since her role was relatively minor and didn’t appear a whole lot, I was ok with sitting through it.

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THE ENDING

I normally don’t like to go into too much detail with the ending, but with this series, since the ending was a bit contentious, I figured it’s important to talk about. (The sentiment from the general public seems to be that the overall series was great, but the ending was bad because it was so tragic -- specifically referring to the part where Tung Boon Sin dies tragically and Tsui Sum doesn’t find out until years later).

Indeed, the ending truly was agonizing and absolutely heartwrenching! Episode 20 actually ended very sweetly (and close to the ‘happily ever after’ ending that most of us wanted), but then episode 21 came along and it ended up being so tragic that part of me really wanted to pretend episode 21 didn’t exist (though of course that’s not possible because that’s the critical episode that ties up all the loose ends).

Personally, I had mixed feelings about the ending – on the one hand, I could understand the purpose of making the ending tragic so that it’s more memorable (which the series definitely did), but on the other hand, I could also see how the writers could have written the ending differently, in a way that would have been more satisfying to the audiences (if not ‘happily ever after’, then even a semi-tragic one would have sufficed for me – especially since that’s the type of ending I had in mind anyway).
I actually don’t think that I would have a problem with the tragic ending (the part where Boon Sin dies) itself if that entire segment had been handled better -- because the way it was portrayed in the finale really did not make a whole lot of sense from a logical standpoint (plus the ‘tortuous’ way in which that part was portrayed – the whole ‘tripping through the streets with blood gushing out of wound’ thing -- was really unnecessary in my opinion).

Anyway…as much as I didn’t want to see the series end the way it did, I will admit that it definitely upped the emotional factor and made the series all the more poignant and memorable!


CONCLUDING THOUGHTS:

Overall, “Bottled Passion” was an excellent series! Even though the series is technically a romantic love story at its core, there’s actually a good mix of other things in there that make the series well-balanced enough for those who may want to watch this but are not into romantic dramas. I personally enjoyed this series tremendously and for me – taking all things into consideration such as script / storyline, cast, acting, etc. -- it’s truly the Best Series of the year (officially now, since 2011 is over already).

This is definitely a series worth watching (I’m already planning to rewatch it soon, which is rare for me) for all the reasons stated above (plus at 21 episodes, it’s short enough so as not to be draggy). Now of course, if you’re the type of person who doesn’t like watching ‘tearjerkers’ at all (it’s pretty much a guarantee that this series will evoke tears at one point or another), then yes, perhaps reconsider…but if you want to see how a truly high quality, well-written, well-acted, and well-produced looks like, then this series is definitely the one to choose!

News Article: For TVB series “Bottled Passion”, the biggest ‘attraction’ is not the male or female lead

Here's a great article I came across (by chance, quite frankly) about the series that I'm currently watching: "Bottled Passion" 《我的如意狼君》. Quite honestly, I'm 'in love' with this series and for me, it is definitely one of the best (if not THE BEST) TVB series that I've watched this year (and perhaps this decade)!

I'll go more into detail about the series in my review (which will be posted by next week, since the finale airs on Monday). For now, I wanted to share the below article in particular because it is truly very well written and brings out the essence of the series almost perfectly.

What I found extremely interesting is that I had almost the exact same thought as the writer of the article in terms of the qualities that makes this series so good, the great job that Tim Gor (and his scriptwriting team) did on the script, and also the way Raymond Wong portrayed the main lead character of 'Tung Boon Seen'. You'll understand more when I post my review...

Lastly, I just wanted to say that it was EXTREMELY DIFFICULT translating this particular article because of the words that were used in Chinese (which was perfect in conveying the 'attractiveness' of this series) -- it was a bit of a struggle to find the best translation for particular words because I didn't want the meaning to be 'lost in translation'.

Anyway, for all those "Bottled Passion" fans out there (yup, you can count me in as part of that group now...LOL), I'm sure you would probably agree with alot of what was written in this article.

Enjoy!


.*********.

For TVB series “Bottled Passion”, the biggest ‘attraction’ is not the male or female lead

Originally published: 12/31/2011

Source: ifeng.com / Nam Fong Daily News

Translated by: llwy12

How long has it been since we’ve seen Niki Chow (周麗淇) in a TVB series? If we recount the last TVB series she was in, it should be modern series “The King of Snooker” from 2 years ago. This time around, seeing her in TVB’s currently airing series “Bottled Passion”, one can’t help but have a ‘long time no see’ feeling. What hasn’t changed is that Niki still gives people a feeling of ‘freshness’.

Not that long ago, the onscreen couple of Niki Chow and Kevin Cheng (鄭嘉穎) attracted many a viewer to their television screens, to the point that it seemed to be only when the two of them were paired together that the series would be especially good to watch. This time around, in “Bottled Passion”, the male lead paired with Niki is Raymond Wong (黄浩然) – a face that has appeared in quite a few TVB series in recent years. This new pairing definitely has a certain ‘freshness’ to it – in terms of looks, Raymond may not be considered the ‘stunningly handsome’ type, but overall, he fits the tastes of most female audiences; as for Niki, since she doesn’t appear often in TVB series, she is bound to garner the attention of audiences who find her appearance in a series refreshing.

The series’ Chinese title was originally《大话情人》[“The Lying Lover”] and was later changed to 《我的如意狼君》[literally translated as ‘My Ideal Wolf Husband’] – one can’t help but praise the wisdom of changing the title, as it brings a more ‘enchanting’ aspect to the series. Even though the cast arrangement in this series may not be considered ‘all-star’, a particular name associated with the series is sure to resound loudly with audiences: ‘golden’ producer Lee Tim Sing (李添勝). Indeed, Tim Gor’s series are generally well worth watching, as the plot is fast-paced and the story-telling effect is strong, which often evokes in audiences the desire to ‘chase’ each episode – each time, he incorporates just enough ‘tension’ in the series to draw audiences in and the more they watch, the more ‘flavorful’ the series gets. It definitely would not be an exaggeration to say that the biggest ‘attraction’ to the series “Bottled Passion” is not the male or female lead, but rather the producer Lee Tim Sing. In almost every episode (usually at the end), there is a climactic moment – this seems to be a unique characteristic in most of Tim Gor’s series. From “Rosy Business” and “No Regrets” to “A Fistful of Stances”, which of his series does not lead the audiences by their noses and evoke a dedicated following? Even with “Bottled Passion” airing in the dreaded post-Anniversary ‘cannon fodder’ timeslot, there is no way to hide the inherent ‘well worth watching’ nature of the series.

In terms of the acting, the character of ‘Tung Boon Seen’ that Raymond Wong portrays in “Bottled Passion” is quite a departure from the mostly ‘simple and honest’ type characters he portrayed in the past. His character in the series is quite complex and can best be described as a ‘semi-villain with the intrinsic qualities of a good-natured person’ – an almost perfect illustration of the expression “guys who aren’t bad, women won’t love them” [男人不壞, 女人不爱]. This seemingly ‘bad’ guy toys with women’s hearts in order to fulfill his plans for revenge against a particular family, but yet at the same time, his genuine concern and insistence on finding his childhood friend ‘Ngau Nai Tong’ [‘Milk Candy’] evokes feelings of sympathy and affection. Towards this ‘conflicted’ and ‘contradictory’ character, audiences will naturally feel both love and hate, though for most, they probably cannot bring themselves to hate him. It’s obvious that Raymond Wong put a lot of effort into portraying this character, as his emotional scenes came across very sincere and meticulous. At times, it even seemed like he was acting with his eyes, as the emotion that his tear-filled eyes conveyed in certain scenes had the effect of momentarily taking the focus away from everything else going on in those scenes.

As for the female lead character of Tsui Sum, her forthright personality suits Niki Chow well – in fact, it can be said that the character is an easy and familiar one for her. Also, her naturally refreshing look is a welcome departure from the heavy makeup and costumes that audiences have been exposed to in recent series. In short, her character is the type that is generally pleasing to audiences.

.------.

Chinese Version:

《我的如意狼君》：最大的牌不是男女主角

2011年12月31日 09:16
来源：南方都市报 作者：林丹丹

有多久没看过周丽淇的戏了？上一部应该是两年前的时装剧《桌球天王》，此次《我的如意狼君》里见到她，略有一种“久违了”的感觉。不变的是，她给人的感觉依然“清新”。

曾几何时，周丽淇与郑嘉颖这对荧屏情侣，吸引了多少眼球与关注，仿佛只有他俩以情侣身份搭档的剧集才特别好看。这次，男主角是黄浩然这张近来在TV B剧集中常出现的面孔。这一组合新鲜得来也蛮有“清新感”，或许黄浩然不是那种很惊艳的帅，但也符合很多女观众的口味；周丽淇不常在TV B露脸，也会让人格外留意几分。

《我的如意狼君》前名《大话情人》，不得不赞叹后来的剧名改得好，更为引人入胜。虽然该剧的演员阵容不算“庞大”，但监制李添胜的名字绝对够响亮。没错，添哥的剧集很耐看，情节紧凑，故事性强，总让人忍不住要追着看，张力十足，越看越有味道。不夸张地说一句，该剧最大的牌不是男女主角，而是监制李添胜。几乎每一集都有高潮，这似乎是添哥出品的独有特色。从《巾帼枭雄》系列到《铁马寻桥》，哪一部不是每一集都牵着观众的鼻子走？即使《我的如意狼君》是在台庆颁奖之后的尴尬档期播出，依然掩盖不住“好看”的本色。

以往看黄浩然扮演的多是单纯或是老实人的角色，这次扮演的佟本善可就“复杂”得多了，可以说得上是有着好人本质的“腹黑男”，几乎是淋漓尽致地诠释了什么是“男人不坏，女人不爱”。这位情场“狼君”为了复仇大计将女人玩弄于股掌之间，俨然是大坏人，但对儿时的玩伴牛奶糖却一直念念不忘，却又令人心生爱怜。对于这一矛盾体人物，观众自然是又爱又恨，估计多数都是恨不起来。黄浩然诠释这一角色也很给力，感情戏显得真挚细腻，各位眼神控们要注意了，他好些时候是在用眼神在演戏，泪光盈盈的眼神瞬间秒杀一切。

女主角徐芯爽快的性格也很适合周丽淇，这种角色对于她来说可以说是驾轻就熟了，清新的妆容在一众浓妆艳抹当中显得尤为脱俗可人，总之就是讨人喜欢。（作者系媒体从业者）

News Article: Producer Lee Tim Sing blasts TVB for airing “Bottled Passion” in ‘cannon fodder’ timeslot

Article originally published 12/27/2011

Source: Oriental Daily

Translated by: llwy12

** Note: Only the part of the article related to Lee Tim Sing was translated**

With all the changes that TVB has been going through recently, the internal politics have been a mess and now, even elders who’ve always been ‘ratings guarantees’ are falling victim to the internal unrest.

Golden producer Lee Tim Sing (Tim Gor), who contributed greatly to TVB’s success for several decades, invited singer/actress Niki Chow to return to TVB last year to film the series “Bottled Passion” with actor Raymond Wong. Around the time of last year’s Sales Presentation, the plan was to arrange for the series to air during October’s ‘golden’ timeslot. Unfortunately, due to internal politics, “Bottled Passion” was moved to the December ‘cannon fodder’ timeslot and replaced instead with Liza Wang and the three gods’ anniversary series “Super Snoops”.

Currently in its finale week, the storyline for “Bottled Passion” revolves around a love story, which seems to be the perfect fit for TVB’s housewife audience’s tastes compared with the cannibalism-themed series “When Heaven Burns”, which is also in its finale week. However, TVB has arranged for the finale of “When Heaven Burns” to air on Sunday (January 1st), pushing “Bottled Passion”s finale to Monday, Jan 2nd (the first time that a TVB series has aired its finale on a Monday). This further added fuel to an already burning fire. It is rumored that because Tim Gor is planning to retire next year, someone is seizing upon the opportunity to give him the ‘cold shoulder’. Despite his previous accomplishments, including last year’s highly rated anniversary series “No Regrets”, Tim Gor was not given any face, causing his newest series to become ‘high quality cannon fodder’!

Our reporter contacted Tim Gor for clarification. When the issue of his series being placed in a cannon fodder timeslot was brought up, a usually mellow Tim Gor became upset, angrily blasting TVB: “Of course there will be someone sacrificed in the PK timeslot! [TN: 'PK' in this context represents a Cantonese curse word]. Several years ago, my series “A Fistful of Stances” was the same way – whether there is a particular motive to it, I really don’t know! It’s not worth getting upset over anymore – besides, I’m not the first one treated this way – cannon fodder or not, doesn’t matter anymore!” Tim Gor expressed that TVB’s action of moving “Bottled Passion” to such a timeslot was hugely discouraging to the cast and crew and he has been trying his best to bring the morale back up. He stated: “I can’t lie – the ratings truly aren’t that great. The worst part is that the series has good word of mouth….the screenwriting team is definitely upset. Aiye! During the holidays, there are at least 600,000 to 700,000 people who leave town for travel, so of course they won’t be sitting in front of their TVs watching the series. If the series was placed in the October timeslot as originally planned, the ratings would be at least 2 points higher, if not more! But I’m used to it already!”

When the series was originally taken out of the October timeslot, Tim Gor had angrily gone up to the drama department to inquire as to the reason: “I admit that the series [Bottled Passion] is not a ‘star-studded’ production, as the main leads are Niki and Raymond. But Niki has truly shown great improvement in her acting, Raymond is a perfect fit for the role, and Joel [Chan] did a good job as anticipated. I put a lot of heart into coming up with this story and the plot was carefully arranged. When I first heard about the series airing in the October timeslot, I thought to myself that it would surely succeed. Unexpectedly though, the drama department pulled the series out of that timeslot last minute – when I asked why, they said it was because of a ‘particular reason’ and even apologized to me!”

Asked about plans to retire, Tim Gor replied that the final decision will be made at the end of next year: “At the end of next year, I will be 65 years old. The company’s retirement age is 60 years, so I have already exceeded by 5 years – it is enough! I still have the heart for it, but not the strength. My colleagues sometimes see me limping when I’m walking, so I already know that health-wise, it’s taking a toll on me!”

.***.

Chinese Version:

李添勝怒插無綫 周麗淇愁爆

無綫易主，內亂紛紛，任你是公司有收視保證的老臣子亦一樣冇面畀！曾為無綫立下不少汗馬功勞的金牌監製李添勝，去年躊躇滿志邀周麗淇（Niki）夥拍首次擔正的黃浩然合作劇集《我的如意狼君》，年初節目巡禮亦打算安排該劇在十月黃金檔首播，可惜因為政治因素，《我》劇被燉落聖誕炮灰檔期，由汪明荃主演的《荃加福祿壽探案》頂上。

明年退休被冷待
因《我》劇劇情夠老土，迎合師奶口味，本周進入結局周，無綫卻安排周日（一月一日）播比較重口味的《天與地》大結局，《我》劇大結局則安排下周一（一月二日）播出，被節目部高層一燉再燉。據知因添哥打算明年退休，有人借勢冷待他，故這位收視爆燈的《巾幗梟雄》監製亦冇例外，《我》劇慘成極品炮灰！

本報致電添哥，提到嘔心瀝血之作變炮灰劇，一向待人接物不慍不火的添哥亦扯火，怒轟無綫：「實有人食PK檔！我以前套《鐵馬尋橋》都食過，係咪用人唯親真係唔知！都嬲唔到咁多，況且我又唔係第一個，都冇話炮唔炮灰囉！」添哥表示，無綫此舉令《我》劇台前幕後意興闌珊，他早已安撫幕後人員。他說：「唔可以講大話，收視真係普通，最慘係口碑好，搞到啲編劇仲唔開心！唉！假期有六、七十萬人離港，如果擺黃金檔起碼高兩點收視啦！不過我都慣喇！」

讚Niki進步神速
添哥更怒氣沖沖踩上節目部質問《我》劇被抽起原因：「我認《我》劇唔係大堆頭粒粒星，孭飛都係Niki同浩然。不過Niki真係進步得好快，浩然又好適合個角色，山聰做得好一早係意料之內。我好畀心機度呢個故事，成件事都有計算，當安排十月檔仲以為一定得。點知畀節目部臨時抽起，話有某啲原因喎，仲同我講對唔住。」

提到退休問題，添哥打算明年底自有決定，他說：「明年年尾滿六十五歲，公司要六十歲退休，做多五年都夠皮啦！我有心無力喇！同事見我行路拐吓拐吓，就知自己體能唔得！」

Mingpao Article: “Detective Columbo” to be Lee Tim Sing’s last series prior to retirement

This article is sort of related to the previous one I did regarding the 2012 Sales Presentation series, plus Lee Tim Sing is one of my favorite producers, so I figured I would post this article on my blog as well.

A few comments regarding the article:

.—Definitely sad that Tim Gor will be retiring, as he was one of the few producers left at TVB who actually produced good, high quality series. Plus Tim Gor has been at TVB like forever (he started with them in the 1960s), so it’s definitely a huge loss for them. But hey, Tim Gor’s health is more important, so if retiring is best for him, then so be it!

.—The other latest piece of news related to this is that it has also been confirmed that the other 2 ‘golden producers’ at TVB – Mui Siu Ching and Lau Kar Ho – will be leaving TVB early next year and going over to nowTV. So this means that TVB will be losing 3 golden producers next year!

.—Tim Gor’s latest series “Bottled Passion” is an awesome series – I’ve been watching it since it premiered on 12/6 and am absolutely hooked! As most people know, there aren’t too many TVB series that I actually like from the post-2000 era and in the last 5 years, it’s been even more dismal, since it’s a huge struggle for me to find even 1 series each year that I feel is worth watching from beginning to end. So for me to enjoy “Bottled Passion” so much is a huge testament to how good the series is (and how well Tim Gor produced it). Needless to say, I will be doing a review of the series later on once I finish watching it.

.—At first I wasn’t sure if I would want to watch “Detective Columbo” next year after seeing the sales presentation clip, but now that I know the series will likely be Tim Gor’s last series prior to retiring, plus I tend to like Tim Gor’s series anyway (and Wayne will be in the series), I will most likely put it on my ‘to watch’ list now…

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“Detective Columbo” to be Lee Tim Sing’s last series prior to retirement

Source: Mingpao

Translated by: llwy12

December has traditionally been a ‘bad’ month for TV ratings: students are busy with finals, parents are busy worrying about their children’s grades in school, families are planning for holiday festivities and travel plans, etc. Understandably, arranging for a series to broadcast during this time period is pretty much the same as putting it up for sacrifice. As the ratings reports come out every week, the focus has been on how much the ratings for the series “When Heaven Burns” has fallen from one week to the next. With the upcoming long holiday and guaranteed heavy travel season that comes with it, the concern in the coming weeks is not only about how first-line series “When Heaven Burns” will fare during that time, but also how much second-line series “Bottled Passion” will be affected as well. Not surprisingly, golden producer Lee Tim Sing (Tim Gor) has already expressed concern about his series “Bottled Passion” losing several hundred thousand viewers.

Currently in its 3rd week of broadcast, the ratings for “Bottled Passion” have been acceptable, with an average of 26 points, putting it ahead of “When Heaven Burns” for 2 weeks in a row. However, Tim Gor admits that the ratings have been lower than what he expected, as he feels that the average ratings should be at least 28 or 29 points in order to be acceptable. Always one to speak what’s on his mind, Tim Gor candidly expressed that series airing during this particular timeslot (the month of December) are definitely at a disadvantage. That being said, Tim Gor has a lot of confidence in “Bottled Passion” and in the past few days, the average ratings have slowly climbed to 28 points – though he is happy about the slight increase in ratings, Tim Gor is also worried that the ratings will drop again as viewers prepare to go out of town for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, especially since the critical finale episodes will air during this time. Tim Gor smiled helplessly and stated: “Coincidentally, “When Heaven Burns” will be airing its finale around the same time as well – since its finale is scheduled for January 1st (Sunday), there was no choice but to schedule “Bottled Passion’s” finale for the next day (Monday, January 2nd). To be honest, I’m a bit worried that audiences won’t know the finale is airing at that time, but unfortunately, there is nothing I can do, since I don’t have a right to interfere with program scheduling. I can only attribute it to bad luck.”

Tim Gor expressed that he is very happy with his series “Bottled Passion”, as the storyline breaks away from the traditional ‘romantic love story’ method and is a nice change for the audiences – plus the pairing of leads Raymond Wong and Nikki Chow is refreshing and their performances in the series are quite up to par.

Having just wrapped filming for his next series “Stairway to Heaven”, Tim Gor stated that the series is currently in post-production; after that, he will be preparing for his newest series “Detective Columbo”, which starts filming next year. Tim Gor expressed that “Detective Columbo” will be his last series prior to retirement: “Two of my directors just left, jumping ship to CTI [Ricky Wong’s company], so I don’t dare to take vacation even during the Christmas holiday because I need to personally monitor post-production for “Stairway to Heaven”. After the New Year, I’ll be starting on “Detective Columbo” – so far, there is nothing in terms of storyline, so I can only give you 6 words: 『哥倫布+黎耀祥』[Columbo + Wayne Lai]. This time around, the filming is really taking a toll on my health – after this series, I truly need to retire!”

The recent trend in the TV industry is that even scriptwriters and copy editors get to sign ‘per series’ contracts, so the reporter asked Tim Gor how he would feel about continuing to produce series on a ‘per series’ basis even after retirement? Tim Gor’s response: “I definitely won’t consider filming long-term, but if they are willing to set a precedent for producers to collaborate on a ‘per series’ contract basis, then that’s something to consider!” Even though Tim Gor says he’s retiring, looks like the door isn’t shut completely – there’s still an opportunity if TVB management is willing to take advantage of it!

Asked about recent reports that the low ratings for series “When Heaven Burns” is causing his series to have low ratings as well, Tim Gor voiced support for the series: “There was obviously a lot of thought put into the writing of the script [for “When Heaven Burns”] and the method of filming is quite good. However, whether it suits the tastes of the general public or not is really up to the audiences to decide. I would never be able to film this type of series, but am interested in observing how others do it and learning from it – if I happen to be at home, I tune in to watch as well.”

.****.

Chinese Version:

大姐大手記﹕添哥退休之作
黎耀祥做神探

【明報專訊】12月是電視台收視悶局的月份，學生忙考試，連家長也齊齊閉關，又多節日與公眾假期；以大姐大所知，劇集安排這段時間播映跟慘烈犧牲無異。這陣子，每星期收視調查報告，大家的焦點就是《天與地》收視跌多少。聖誕新年長假外遊又嚟緊，除了《天與地》，連第二線《我的如意狼君》的金牌監製李添勝都牙痛咁聲，話睇住幾十萬觀眾流失。

播映進入第3周的《如意狼君》收視成績算有交代，平均26點，是連續兩星期收視之冠了。添哥跟大姐大呻，《如》劇的收視跟自己預期有出入，應該多2點收視，有28、29點才合情合理。添哥一向有話直說，指劇集在這檔期播映一定蝕底。他對《如意狼君》有把握，早兩日收視已升近平均28點，但睇住收視逐步攀升的同時，亦憂聖誕假期因觀眾外遊收視又流失。連大結局也要安排在1月2日（周一）連續兩小時播映。添哥苦笑說﹕「撞正《天與地》也大結局，安排1月1日（周日）播映，《如意狼君》只有延至周一結局。我都擔心觀眾不知道，但又無法子。我無權干涉節目編排，只有話自己唔好彩。」

添哥對《如意狼君》滿意，是劇情撇掉了陳腔濫調的戀愛，男女主角黃浩然與周麗淇配搭清新，兩人表現也稱職。他剛完成了《天梯》的拍攝，準備做後期，明年再拍《神探哥倫布》，是自己退休的作品。添哥說﹕「我剛走了兩個導演，跳槽到CTI，所以聖誕也不敢放假，要睇住《天梯》做後期。過完年又要做《哥倫布》，暫時沒有內容可言，只有6個字『哥倫布+黎耀祥』。今次真的攞我老命，拍完這部真的要退休了。」

最近無綫連編審也可以部頭合作，大姐大就提議添哥，「部頭」玩吓過戲癮又何妨？「長約真的不能考慮，除非開先例，連監製都可以部頭合作啦！」看來添哥話退休，只要無綫高層肉緊一點，再出力挽留，觀眾還是繼續有李添勝新作品欣賞。

與添哥講開《天與地》被指累街坊拖低收視，添哥就話自己都鍾意睇《天與地》。「這個劇本寫得有心機，拍攝都不錯。不過，是否適合大眾口味要看觀眾選擇。我拍不到這類型的劇集，都要看看別人怎樣拍；若果我沒有出街，在家一定捧場。」