TVB 50th Anniversary Gala – My Thoughts

With this year being TVB’s 50^th anniversary, I decided to tune in to their Anniversary Gala celebration that took place on November 19^th (this past weekend) just to see if they would do anything “special” to celebrate such a significant milestone.  Most people know that I’ve been following TVB since the 80s era and back then (as well as throughout the 90s), the anniversary gala each year was truly a “grand” event that I always looked forward to watching – it was absolutely a glamorous affair where all the stars would come out and give us audiences a truly entertaining and memorable show.  Nowadays, things are obviously different – the anniversary gala has ceased to be a “grand” affair for at least a decade now and every year, it seems like TVB is merely “going through the motions,” haphazardly throwing something together just because they have to (after all, being HK’s main free-to-air TV station, they can’t “not” celebrate their own birthday, as it would make them look really bad).  I’ve continued to watch the anniversary galas the past couple years, even though most of them have been horrible – I do so mostly out of curiosity to see whether, for once, TVB will make a decent gala show…unfortunately, each year, I am hugely disappointed, as the show gets worse and worse each year, to the point that I wonder why I even bother watching.  Though I knew better than to have any type of expectations for a TVB program, I still went into the 50^th anniversary gala hoping that perhaps this time, with it being such a special occasion, TVB won’t let me down.  Looks like this was wishful thinking on my part – while the show overall was heaps better than last year’s gala (which I don’t consider a compliment since last year’s gala was the worst one ever, both in terms of ratings and content), overall, it was still disappointing in that the show was pretty much “same old same old” as previous years in terms of being lackluster, boring, and hugely disorganized.   Writing this post up now, several days after the gala aired, I honestly can’t remember much of the event, which is already a sign that the show was not memorable.  This is especially significant given the fact that I am able to vividly remember almost all of the past galas that took place back in the 80s and 90s even though it has been years since I last watched those shows, yet I can barely remember any of the galas from the past 15 years.  It’s pretty sad and I guess in a way, it shows how little I care about TVB nowadays compared to the past. 

The only 2 things I remember from this year’s anniversary gala were also the 2 best segments of the entire show and in the spirit of giving credit where it’s due, I will give TVB a rare pat on the back for both these segments (don’t get used to it though, lol).  The first segment I thought was done well this year was, surprisingly, the anniversary gala skit – this time around, the skit was actually kind of funny (I have no problems admitting that I got a few laughs out of watching certain artists make fools of themselves):  Wayne actually made me laugh when he resurrected his classic imitation of Roman Tam, I chuckled when Raymond Cho imitated Wayne, and yes, FAMA was hilarious with their imitations of Dodo Cheng and Eric Tsang (and watching Eric “beat them up” afterwards was funny too, lol).  Of course, when I compare this year’s skit to the “classic” ones from the older anniversary galas, it absolutely pales in comparisons – but taken by itself, there was obviously some thought and effort put into the skit this year and for that, I will give TVB some brownie points.

For me though, the biggest highlight of the entire show was the “Hidden Heroes” segment where TVB paid tribute to all the “green leaf” (supporting) artists who have worked for them over the years.  This segment was technically in two parts – the first part consisted of Fook Luk Sau (Wong Cho Lam, Louis Yuen, Johnson Lee) dressing up as comic book super heroes (Batman, Wonder Woman, and I can’t remember who the third one was) to battle 3 “enemy villains” played by veteran green leaf artists Law Lok Lam, Jimmy Au, and Lau Kong.  To be honest, the “fake battle” was kind of cheesy and if it weren’t for the 3 veterans, I probably would’ve stopped watching the segment altogether, but I’m glad I stuck with it because part two was truly AWESOME!  After the corny battle scene, FLS announced that there was actually more and when they turned around, all of the “green leaf” artists were standing on stage (the ones who attended the gala of course).  The first row of artists were specially chosen to represent the various types of “supporting” roles that we see often in TVB series and each of them were formally introduced as well as got the chance to say a few words to the audience.  I loved this segment and actually got a little teary-eyed seeing so many wonderful supporting actors / actresses up there finally getting the “5 minutes of fame” they deserve.  For once, TVB actually did the right thing by giving these unsung heroes (the true pillars of all TVB series) the credit they deserve and even though it still wasn’t enough time in my opinion (take parts one and two together and it was only about 15 minutes max), it’s already a huge improvement considering these artists usually get no recognition at all in past galas.  Again, to give credit where it’s due, kudos to TVB for thinking about the “green leaf” artists this time around and for putting together a segment that was truly memorable as well as fitting of a 50^th anniversary celebration (enjoy the praise while it lasts TVB because it’s rare for me to give any nowadays….).

Below I’ve included a link to part two of the “green leaf” artists tribute (on Youtube) as well as a brief “write-up” that HK01 did on the segment.  I hope you enjoy the segment as much as I did! 

One last note -- I’ve also done tributes to green leaf artists on my blog in the past and I honestly hope that other bloggers who follow the HK entertainment industry will do the same.  There is never enough recognition or credit given to supporting artists (mainstream media cares mostly about the lead/popular artists and/or artists who are controversial and constantly put themselves in the line of media fire), so whenever I see tributes of this sort to these “unsung heroes,” I have no problem heaping on the praise.  It’s a small token of my appreciation and gratitude for these artists’ unwavering dedication and efforts at making HK entertainment still worth following!

Video source: HK01 article

My Thoughts on TVB’s 44th Anniversary Gala (萬千星輝賀台慶2011)

I just finished watching this year’s TVB Anniversary Gala show (which took place in HK yesterday). As I said in my review of last year’s gala (those who are interested can read it here), the galas nowadays can’t compare with the ‘grand’ and ‘glamorous’ gala events of the 80s/90s, as the galas of late have all been lackluster and extremely boring (plus the performances are usually nothing to rave about). Watching the past few year’s anniversary galas really makes me yearn for the good old days.

Anyway, back to this year’s gala….here are some of the ‘highlights’ and ‘lowlights’ from the show:

.> In comparisons to last year’s gala (where the biggest names in attendance in terms of siu sangs were pretty much Wayne Lai and Moses Chan), there definitely were a lot more siu sangs and fa dans who attended this year. Not surprisingly, many of TVB’s ‘favorites’ who are currently being promoted (such as Kevin Cheng, Michael Tse, Fala Chen, Moses Chan, Bosco Wong, Myolie Wu, Kate Tsui, Ron Ng, Raymond Lam, Tavia Yeung, etc.) as well as others currently headlining anniversary series (such as Wayne Lai, Maggie Cheung, etc.) attended the show – but honestly, how many of them attended because they HAD to (meaning to get on TVB’s good side due to the awards show coming up next month)? Also, even though a lot more ‘recognizable’ artists attended, majority of them didn’t do anything significant except participate in the opening segment – the rest of the time, they just stood around or watched the show from the stands or backstage (or maybe some of them even left?).

.> The only ‘highlight’ of the show for me were the parts with Ruco Chan (which is partly why I liked the first segment with the FH3 cast). He actually got to participate in a few of the segments, which is fine with me, since I like watching him -- plus he looked so absolutely fine and handsome in the outfit he wore! [Sidenote: He definitely has my vote for Favorite Male Character at the awards ceremony this year – I hope TVB doesn’t make that award into another ‘consolation prize’ for TV King like they’ve been doing for the past couple years!]

.> The focus of the show was primarily on the following ‘groups’: the cast of “Lives of Omission” and “Forensic Heroes III”, the 3 Gods (aka Fuk Luk Sau), the Voice singers, the Mr and Miss HKs, the Kung Fu Supernova finalists, and the currently promoted siu sangs / fa dans who attended. Each group pretty much put on various performances and competed against each other – the winners basically just got bragging rights. Most of the performances were lame and boring, with the exception of maybe 1 or 2 that were actually interesting (namely the first segment involving the FH3 cast and the ‘tribute’ to past gala feats put on by MC Jin, Hanjin Tan, Bob Lam, and can’t remember the fourth person). Oh, and they didn’t have the anniversary skit this year either, which sort of sucked because even though the skits in the past few years were stupid, at least they provided some laughs…maybe Eric Tsang got tired of having to ‘carry’ the skits each time, since that’s pretty much what happens – or it could be that the artists didn’t want to be ‘tortured’ by him anymore….

.> Out of the 8 hosts for the event, 7 were good, logical choices (the ‘usual’ hosts – Eric Tsang, Nat Chan, Dodo Cheng, Liza Wang, Astrid Chan, Derek Lee, Sharon Chan) – but the last one (King Kong) was a joke! I can’t believe that they had King Kong as one of the hosts – of all the artists they could have chosen to co-host, they had to choose him? I mean, I could barely understand a single word he said! As much as I dislike the 3 gods (Wong Cho Lam, Louis Yuen, Johnson Lee), any of those 3 would have been a better choice than King Kong (at least we don’t have to struggle with trying to understand what’s being said)! Having him as a host for such a major event really detracts from the show as a whole – plus it started getting so annoying listening to him speak his choppy Cantonese throughout the entire show…geez, if they were going to have him host, at least give him a small part only so we don’t have to keep listening to his annoying voice over and over again! So much for a supposedly ‘classy’ event!

.> The musical performances this year sucked! I did enjoy the beginning part of the Voice singers’ performance when they sang those classic hits, but the rest of that segment – namely the parts where Kiki Sheung and Nancy Sit performed – were absolutely cringeworthy!

First of all, Kiki’s outfit was horrible (what was up with that big ole wig?), but her performance was even more so – she sang the classic English song ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ and not only did she slur her words (obviously her English isn’t good), she was also tremendously off tune (don’t know if it was her lack of familiarity with the lyrics or what, but it sounded like she was trying to ‘catch up’ with the melody to the song). After hearing her sing in last year’s gala, I was expecting a decent performance – boy was I disappointed!

Nancy’s performance was beyond horrible (I can’t even find a word to describe it!). I’ve never liked Nancy both as an actor and singer because I’ve always felt that she’s too OTT (over the top) and almost every single one of her performances (whether in TV series or an actual variety show) is filled with exaggerated movements. Therefore, when I knew she was going to perform, I already expected that it would be another one of those silly, OTT performances. BUT I wasn’t expecting for it to be as bad as it was! Her outfit and makeup were so over the top, it was an eyesore just looking at her. And that horrible song she sang (if I can even call it a song – most of it was just nonsensical murmuring to me) – all I can say is: OMG! (In fact, I had pretty much ‘nodded off’ by that point because the show was so boring, but then when Nancy opened her mouth and started singing, I was shocked back awake!). Needless to say, I was tremendously relieved when that segment ended.

The ONLY redeeming factor in that segment was Susanna Kwan. She sang beautifully as usual (and her outfit was pretty too – she was the only one of the 3 who was dressed decently).

.> Of course, the 3 gods were ‘prevalent’ throughout the anniversary show (not surprisingly). They participated in several segments and also did a ridiculously silly performance that I found sort of crude and corny. I understand that some people like that kind of humor, but I’m definitely not one of them – I didn’t find their segment funny at all (except for the joke they played on Dodo by singing her ex-boyfriend David Lui’s song). Other than that, the rest of the segment was pretty much the usual 3 gods crude humor (and I’m sorry, but arranging for all those siu sangs and fa dans to sit there onstage and laugh at the 3 gods’ antics as if they were the funniest thing they had ever seen was so fake -- it was pretty much like TVB arranged a ‘laugh track’ for their performance because they already knew people were annoyed and tired of seeing the 3 gods). I actually preferred the performance that was competing against theirs – the one that MC Jin’s group did – it wasn’t the best, but at least it was obvious that they put a lot of effort and practice into it.

.> I usually enjoy the game show segment where the hosts draw artists’ names at random to participate and possibly win prize money. However, this year, I was too ticked off to enjoy that segment. The first thing that ticked me off was the part when Liza Wang ‘just happened’ to pick her own name from the stack of name cards and ended up being one of the 4 artists competing for prize money – that part was so obviously rigged, it wasn’t even funny! I mean, it can’t be a coincidence that she was asked to pick the first name and she was like “oh, let me just pick up the first card on top and see what it says” and then it happened to be her own name – I don’t buy it for one second! And to top it off, she actually ended up getting 2nd prize -- come on now, she doesn’t need the prize money nor the ’15 minutes of fame’….why not give that spot to other artists who really could have used the money and the screen time? I swear, there should really be a rule that the hosts of the gala aren’t allowed to participate because every year, it seems that one of them always gets chosen for the game show and ends up winning something – I mean, they are already getting money from hosting the event, do they need to ‘hog’ the prize money as well?

The other thing that ticked me off with that segment was how the money-counting machine kept malfunctioning…not only was it embarrassing, it also put the credibility of the entire game into question (how do we know that the machine counted correctly if it keeps breaking down every few minutes?). Come on TVB – this is your anniversary gala for goodness sake – is it too much to invest in a money-counting machine that actually works? Stop being cheap and spend money where you should for once!

Overall, the show was a huge letdown. I actually regret having watched it because I just wasted 2 hours of my time that I could have spent doing something else. Plus I have to go wash my eyes out now after watching all those Mr HKs dance around the stage in pantyhose and high heels (don’t worry if you don’t know what I’m talking about – you’re better off not watching that particular segment)!

TVB 28th Anniversary Gala (1995): The Top 10 Highest Rated Series of All Time (up to that point)

Retrotvb's post recapping TVB's 1997 Anniversary Gala (read it here) inspired me to write this post about a particular segment of the 1995 Anniversary Gala (though I will admit that I remembered the date wrong at first and thought it was the 1998 gala, but it was really the 1995 one – shame on me!).

The show itself was great, as up to that point (prior to the start of the awards thing in 1997), the galas were still grand, all-star events. (I echo retrotvb's sentiments regarding the pointlessness of the awards, which turned the anniversary galas into lackluster events, but that's another story). The true highlight of the entire show for me (and probably for other 80s/90s TVB series fanatics as well) was the segment near the end of the show when TVB did a 'countdown' of the 10 highest rated TVB series up to that point. Almost every single one of my favorites made the list and I would venture to say that all 10 series were deserving because they were classic, high quality, well-made series.

The most memorable moment for me in this entire segment was when the "winner" of the countdown -- meaning the series that made it to the top of the list as the #1 highest rated series of all time (up until that point) -- was announced. Not suprisingly, the series that came out on top was "Looking Back in Anger" from 1989. True classic and truly deserving of the #1 spot!!! But what really did it for me was when Felix Wong, Kathy Chow, Deric Wan, and Maggie Siu went up on stage and accepted the 'award’ on behalf of the entire cast (I wonder who got to keep it? LOL!). Even though they were only up there for a minute or two and didn't say anything really, it was just awesome to see that cast together again – especially Deric, since he had left TVB long ago and made a special appearance just for that moment. Of course, I wish that Carina would have been able to make it as well (because then the cast would truly be complete in terms of the main leads), but I guess it wasn't meant to be...

The countdown was prefaced with these amazing numbers: the 10 series combined garnered a total of over 2.2 billion viewers (households), with each series averaging over 80 million viewers (households). Those numbers may ‘pale’ in comparison to the numbers today, but considering the series were of a way higher quality back then (the ones nowadays pretty much suck), those numbers were definitely something to ‘rave’ about!

I loved the way the segment was done – after the number of viewers and the series was announced, they had singers perform parts of the theme song for each series on the list while clips from the series played on the screen (though the singers weren’t the original artists who performed the songs, I was ok with it because the songs themselves were such classics that they sounded good no matter who sang them).


Here’s the countdown:

10th place: Police Cadet ‘84 新紮師兄 (1984)
(88131000 viewers)

9th place: The Big Family 大家族 (1991)
(97,916,000 viewers)

8th place: The Two Most Honorable Knights 絕代雙驕 (1988)
(98,513,000 viewers)

7th place: The Challenge of Life 人在邊緣 (1990)
(106,987,000 viewers)

6th place: The Breaking Point 今生無悔 (1991)
(117,925,000 viewers)

5th place: Love and Passion 萬水千山總是情 (1982)
(233,674,000 viewers)

4th place: Blood of Good and Evil 我本善良 (1990)
(283,266,000 viewers)

3rd place: Legend of the Condor Heroes 射鵰英雄傳 (1983)
(356,163,000 viewers)

2nd place: The Feud of Two Brothers 流氓大亨 (1986)
(388,323,000 viewers)

1st place: Looking Back in Anger 義不容情 (1989)
(431,355,000 viewers)

.--.

My ‘quick’ recap:

.>> Deric and Maggie are the big winners in this countdown, as both of them had 3 series a piece (happened to be the same series) that made it onto the list (not to mention being part of the #1 series).

.>> Felix came in a very close second with 2 series in the countdown -- though he does have an advantage in terms of ranking in that both of his series were in the top 3!

.>> Tony, Alex, and Leon did pretty well too, with 2 series a piece in the countdown.

.>> I think that the only one I would disagree with is “Love and Passion” – I’ve seen that series and even though it’s much better than many of today’s series, I really didn’t think it was all that great compared to the other series on the list. But maybe it made it on the list because it’s such a classic (it is the oldest one of the list)? But then again, there are many other series that would fall into the ‘classic’ category….

.--.

For those who are interested, below is the link to the 2nd half of the 1995 Anniversary Gala – the countdown starts at 33:12.

TVB Anniversary Gala 1995 (part 2)

Feel free to comment on what you think of the countdown! :o)

TVB 43rd Anniversary Gala (萬千星輝賀台慶2010)

TVB’s annual anniversary “birthday party” occurred today (yesterday in HK) – it was a bit lackluster compared to years past (well, it’s actually been lackluster for the past decade and can’t compare at all to the ones from the 80s and 90s)….

Anyway, here are some of the highlights from this year’s anniversary gala that I felt were worth mentioning (good or bad):

.> It was obvious that Moses and Wayne were the biggest ‘stars’ of the anniversary gala show, as they were probably the biggest names there in the ‘fa dans & siu sangs’ category. Many of the other ‘big names’ and TVB’s current ‘favorites’ (i.e.: Charmaine, Sheren, Raymond, Steven, Myolie, Bosco, etc.) were all no shows . There was also barely any representation from anniversary series GMG (well, the 3 main leads didn’t show up at least) – it was pretty much the NR / CBML anniversary gala if you ask me (the cast from both series were the focus and pretty much overshadowed everyone else).
*** SIDENOTE: Found out some more information about the GMG thing, but gonna save it for my next post, which will be another one in my “TVB Rant” series….

.> TVB pretty much recycled some of the same ideas from last year’s anniversary gala this time around – namely having artists who are not known for singing partner up and perform songs, having the veteran green-leaf artists (the 50+ year old crowd) do a song and dance number, doing the whole ‘wet dance’ thing, etc….the only difference is that TVB shuffled things around in terms of order and also they had different artists perform in those segments from the ones who did so last year.

.> I must say that the anniversary skit that they did this time around was one of the funnier ones from this decade (though not as funny compared to the ones from the ‘old days’) – it was pretty clever how Eric Tsang did a parody of Virginia Lok and TVB’s infamous internal politics (I was cracking up because a lot of it was so true and he would irreverently poke fun at it). Oh, and for once, they didn’t make a huge mess and ‘torture’ artists with whipped cream, water, etc. (though I did feel sorry for Moses, who was pretty much the only one who ‘fell victim’ to Eric’s shenanigans….).

.> The ‘3 Gods Award Ceremony’ was interesting – I was actually expecting it to be funny, but it wasn’t really. The only thing I liked about that segment was the first part when they showed pictures of a few artists when they were young – the Kiki ones were nice and the Evergreen part was hilarious (the Evergreen / Raymond Lam pictures were quite clever –hey, who would’ve thought that Evergreen as a teenager would resemble Raymond Lam?

.> The last segment where TVB artists whom we are not used to seeing them sing were paired up with the Voice contestants for a ‘sing-off’….the 4 artists who sang were King Kong, Evergreen, Kiki, and Eric Tsang. All 4 of them did pretty good jobs, but I was most impressed with Kiki and Eric’s performances: Kiki sang like a pro – the way she carried her pitch and tone…wow, she sounded like a real singer! And Eric – well, I’ve always known that he’s a good singer because I’ve heard him several times, but he definitely did an awesome job (hey, in my opinion, he sang way better than his partner Mag Lam!!!) Evergreen was ok, but I think he could have done better – probably because his Mandarin pronunciation wasn’t that great, so it distracted me a bit from actually concentrating on his singing. As for King Kong, well, he did good, but I’m actually not surprised because I thought I had heard of him before back when I was following Taiwan entertainment in the late 90s / early 00s and if my memory serves me correctly, I think that he was a professional singer? I could be wrong, but his name just sounds familiar.

Overall, the show was a disappointment – though of course, not too surprising given TVB’s lack of star power in the past few years. My assessment: if you didn’t get to watch it, don’t worry – you didn’t miss anything!