Hong Kong TV Series that I am watching at the moment...

So far I am watching quite a lot of series. One of them is 'Overachievers' and I can understand how the ratings are below average despite it being star-studded. Those stereotypical household wives may be expecting for some family feud by rather it's not. Then others (such as young viewers for instance) may be turned off from the look of the series as appearing as a family feud series when in fact it has got heavy content about business and trading. Story-wise so far so good and the performances are not bad at all. Grace Chan acting as 'a Bi' was not bad at all as a newcomer. A problem I have with Wayne Lai is that even though he makes a competent performance as 'Old Mai', I always see similar acting styles or characters of him being 'righteous and often outspoken' that is preventing him being having a breakthrough performance. I really hope that sooner or later he will get a chance to play an ugly, creepy and disgusting villain. Now that would be a breakthrough! I must however applaud the actress portraying 'Ivy' as the mistress for her rather convincing performance. She appeared in episode four from 'Tiger Cubs II' and I liked her there as well. I will talk more perhaps if I decide to make a review for this series.

Second series I am watching at the moment is yes, 'Come On Cousin'. I have mixed feelings about this series. At times it is extremely witty and funny that will make me laugh so hard and be glued to every scene but then at other times the story is a bit lame and poorly constructed. This aside and we have one of the most best cast group in TVB's history, with Joey, Roger, Wong Cho Lam, the other secondary characters and veterans having such amazing chemistry that makes it a formula for success (if only they polished the series a bit more and stopped it being so inconsistent and silly).

There was this one scene (in episode 19) where Roger Kwok was trying to manipulate the emotions of the people trying to buy pork in the supermarket. Roger Kwok did very well in terms of using different persuasive methods such as convincing them to buy pork, scaring them of pork's potential harm to the body, alleviating their fear of buying pork by claiming the harm is insignificant and then telling them how they have sacrificed the life of a pig to fulfil their desires to make a meal. Whether it is for Matt from 'Black Heart White Soul' or 野仔 from 'Come On Cousin', he has my vote for this year's Best Actor award!!!

Third series I am watching right now is 'Tiger Cubs II'. Even with the lame excuse that 'Madam Sin' (portrayed by Jessica Hsuan from Tiger Cubs I) is off to England for training, I am still liking this series so far. Compared to the first series, this one has a bit more dark theme where episode four was about a bizarre Japanese terrorist organisation being unscrupulous to ensure the end of the world. Sounds crazy right? Linda Chung started off very unnatural and so forced but I am tolerate her in here much more than her performance as 'Rachel' from Brother's Keeper. I hope she does get better as the series moves on.

Fourth series that I am watching but not very keen to watch is 'Come Home Love'. I am only watching this series when I have spare time or busy doing something at the same time. Sort of like 'Tiger Cubs II' each episode is a different focus and I find it ok. Not much to comment except I am hope that this series ends soon since it is dragging way too long with some of the characters that I like gone. Not much to comment about this series.

Think it stops from here? Nope. I am also watching HKTV's series!!!

Fifth series that I am watching is 'Borderline' and sixth series is 'The Election'. If you want my honest opinion I still rather much prefer TVB series. Maybe it is because I am too used to TVB's cinematography where for the HKTV series the scenes are a bit too dim to see. It was both good and refreshing though to see a lot of former TVB artists to be acting such as Dominic Lam. Plot-wise though, 'The Election' grabbed my attention of it being so relate-able to the current situation in HK yet it was filmed quite a while ago. I also am finding it hard to understand or bear on Angelica's accent. Other than that she does have some acting chops and I really applaud HKTV for taking risks to produce series that are interesting yet controversial in nature. I am concerned though that the sensitive and quite complicated plot for 'The Election' may be too hard for viewers to follow on and will this shut down the opportunity for HKTV to have a market in Mainland China? We'll see.

One thing that I discovered is that for this year all the anniversary series seem to either sequels or spin-offs. Overachievers can be viewed as a modern spin-off series for 'The Confidant' given the identical casting (except for Michelle but I was half-expecting Michelle Yim to pop out from somewhere). Although Come On Cousin has a different story compared to 'Inbound Troubles' I find Come on Cousin to still be very funny even if it pales in comparison compared to its predecessor in terms of consistency. As for Tiger Cubs II, I know that people are turned off with 'Jessica Hsuan' gone but I think the downfall for this series compared to the first one is that the script is less tight and therefore less entertaining.

Are you watching the same series as I am? Feel free to comment!