Just realized that it’s already mid of November. This month has been quite tough with countless overtime work (without overtime pay!) and stress from dealing with toxic people in the office. To be honest, that’s something far worst to deal with than the work itself. My career definitely isn’t smooth in 2024 and I am hoping that things would get better next year.
Few days ago, I have completed another Hong Kong series and it’s time for a brief review here as usual. The drama is titled ‘No Return’ (巾帼枭雄之悬崖) and it is the 4th season of the popular ‘Rosy Business’ series that started way back in 2009. ‘No Return’ starred Wayne Lai, Nancy Wu, Edwin Siu, Hera Chan, Joey Law, etc. The story sets in Shanghai in the 1930s/1940s and revolves on an unexpected crossover between a competitive businesswoman (Nancy) who owns a bank and an unemployed middle-aged man (Wayne) who has talented mind in business.
Their business-oriented interactions soon develops into love after the various hardship they encountered including a man (Edwin) who came to take revenge against Nancy. Perhaps I have high expectation on the series and ended up being left quite disappointed after watching the whole series (25 episodes in total). Chemistry between Wayne and Nancy was there but I do enjoy Wayne-Sheren (the actress who took the female lead in the first 2 seasons) pairing more. The plot wasn’t exciting and I felt that the last two episodes after death of Edwin (the main villain) were just pointless and unnecessary. The scriptwriter seems to force themselves to try to end it at 25 episodes.
I was expecting much more from Edwin’s character but nope…poor writing to his character that actually has potential. On the other hand, it is so obvious that TVB is heavily promoting Hera Chan as the young actress to look out for but her acting is still way not aligned to the important roles that she have been given recently including this one. In summary, the standard for this 4th season dropped quite significantly. The first season was the best and an instant classic. The second season was solid too. The third season was starting to get bad as I heard (I didn’t watch that season). And now, the 4th season and it was just average at best. I would rate ‘No Return’ only 6.8 out of 10.
Nancy Wu has a shot for best actress at the coming TVB Anniversary Awards which is usually held on early January. However, Tavia still has the better chance of clinching the title with better performance in ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ which is also a better series overall in my opinion. By the way, it will be TVB’s 57th anniversary gala/celebration on this coming Tuesday.
(Images in this post are from various online sources)