This year, Hong Kong’s biggest television station TVB is celebrating its 50th anniversary. In conjunction with this significant and historic golden jubilee, the station has released many big-production series this year that includes many artists that we have not seen for a long time (although the overall quality is still questionable). So far, I have watched over 12 TVB dramas this year and I’m expected to watch few more before the end of the year. This makes 2017 the year with highest number of dramas that I have watched.
The anniversary celebration started with a lighting ceremony held last weekend. It is attended by Liza Wang, Carol Cheng, Ha Yu, Louise Lee, Michelle Yim, Moses Chan, Kristal Tin, Kenneth Ma, Bosco Wong, Vincent Wong, Maggie Shiu, Elena Kong, Sharon Chan, etc. It is the standard practice by the station to have this lighting ceremony to mark the start of many anniversary events to follow and also to introduce the anniversary dramas and programmes. Before this ceremony, there has been many speculations that there would be 7 anniversary dramas this year, rather than the typical 3 or 4. To allow all these dramas to finish airing and compete for this year’s awards, there has been rumour that TVB is pushing its annual TVB Anniversary Awards to early next year rather than in their usual mid-December slot.
The lighting ceremony has squashed all the rumours. There is only 4 anniversary dramas and they are ‘Heart and Greed’, ‘Oh My Grad’, ‘My Ages Apart’ and ‘The Exorcist’s Meter’. ‘Oh My Grad’ which is the third series in ‘Inbound Troubles’ franchise headed by Wong Cho Lam is currently airing and I am watching it too. Wong Cho Lam only has a very minor role in here and the result is there is not much fun and humor to be enjoyed from this series as expected earlier. The other series currently airing that I’m also watching is ‘Line Walker: The Pelude’ which is a prequel to the successful 2014’s Line Walker series. It is not bad but not up to the intensity and drama we have seen from its predecessor. I’m surprised that it is not selected as one of the anniversary dramas. On the other hand, I’m surprised that a supernatural drama (The Exorcist’s Meter) is one of the anniversary dramas. This genre usually doesn’t appeal to most audiences and are usually delivering mediocre result and yet is picked as one of the highlight of the station’s 50th anniversary. Hmmm…
I’m now only excited for the release of ‘Heart and Greed’, the third entry of the famous ‘Heart of Greed’ franchise about family feuds. The first two are classic and I hope this one could live up to that but I doubt it. I’m happy that the veteran cast are all back (Ha Yu, Louise Lee, Michelle Yim and Susanna Kwan) but I don’t like the junior line-up. It would be awesome if the previous cast (Moses Chan, Raymond Lam, Tavia Yeung, Fala Chen, Linda Chung, etc) all return but that would be impossible since most of them has gone their own way and left TVB.
So now this means that the ‘Deep in the Realm of Conscience’ (sequel to ‘Beyond the Realm of Conscience’) and a series starring Dicky Cheung (forgot the title) are not anniversary dramas and will only be released early next year. Media have been reporting on them since early this year and everyone is hyped but now they are pushed to next year. I can understand that since the station is not able to fit in all these dramas before the end of the year which is now fast approaching. So I guess these dramas will not be competing for this year’s TVB Anniversary Awards too. The awards will be held on end of December most probably, a week before Christmas. Before that, there will be the Anniversary Gala to be held on mid of November. There would be a special party next month to celebrate 50th anniversary of Liza Wang in the station too.
(Image in this post is from TVB’s Facebook page)
Vincent Loy's Online Journal 