When the original series ‘Barrack O’Karma’ was first released in 2019, it was met with critical acclaim and success due to its mind bending story, great performances and unique take on its supernatural theme. Many were immediately looking forward to its sequel that was planned soon after the first series. After several filming delays, pandemic and postponement of its release, its sequel titled ‘Barrack O’Karma 1968’ is finally released this year with high anticipation.
With almost all of the original cast returning, the series once again centred on the various sub-plots taking place mostly in the Twilight Mansion building. The core of the story was still based on themes of parallel universes with Joel Chan and Selena Li taking on multiple characters again. Besides the two of them, the 20-episodes series also starred Timothy Cheng, Christine Ng, Henry Yu, Willie Wai, Jazz Lam, Candice Chiu, Roxanne Tong, Arnold Kwok, Karl Ting, Hubert Wu, Shiga Lin, Bob Cheung, etc.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a very positive reception to this sequel this time. It felt to me as though the main storyline is confusing for the sake of being confusing. Most of the side stories have little to no connection to the main storyline or the main characters. The side stories are only made more scary/darker but less interesting this time around. They felt very detached to one another too.
The series is still good that it is able to make you scratch your head, think and put some imagination on why it ended up this way. Not many TVB series are able to accomplish this. However, I felt that the scriptwriters overdid it and all the juxtapositions of ideas and universes made the drama quite a confusing mess now. It is also a pity that Joel and Selena’s multiple characters in this sequel are more flat too although they still share very great chemistry on screen.
A good attempt for a sequel though. It is extremely difficult to write a follow-up sequel from the original which was already so spectacular and out-of-the-box. There are still some very creative ideas in play here but diluted by detached side stories and super confusing and over complicated approach on the theme of parallel universe (everyone is talking about multiverse now!). Out of 10 points, I rate ‘Barrack O’Karma 1968’ a total of 7.1.
(Images in this post are from various online sources)
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