‘Storm in a Cocoon’ (守業者) is a 2014′s Hong Kong TVB pre-modern series of 32 episodes that revolves on a large silk factory run by a wealthy businessman, which is later passed on to his third son, Ka Yeung while the latter encounter various challenges to take care simultaneously the huge business, family,friends and his love. The series starred Steven Ma, Tavia Yeung, Evergreen Mak, Maggie Shiu, Natalie Tong, Elliot Ngok, etc. It’s good to see the return of Steven Ma, a very great actor to TVB drama.
The plot first started with the return of Ka Yeung (Steven) to the family after five years becoming military doctor. Not long after the great news, her second sister died and he team up with Bing Bing (Tavia), one of his silk workers to investigate the murder. More stories unfold within the family that is already full of conflicts, and later problems emerged on the business too. The plot is quite interesting as there seems to be a lot of things going on (fighting within family to get to the top, business politics, complicated relationship within silk workers, and also the usual romance parts).
What’s exciting from this particular drama is that it has a lot of twists. TVB tend to put in a lot of surprises into their series recently but most are very much expected and nothing really turns out surprising in the end. However, ‘Storm in a Cocoon’ is proven to be the exception. First, some parts had me curious and guessing who is the person behind all these. That got me engaged to follow up with the coming episodes to know the answer. That’s a good thing. I had quite a few shocks here.
Steven Ma and Tavia Yeung. Both delivered exceptional performances as the main leads in the story. I’m still wondering why Steven Ma has never been awarded TVB’s Best Actor yet. I hope his time will come this year eventhough the early airing of the series this year may be a disadvantage. There is a huge number of supporting casts here, and all did very well too. And do you notice that you now see Elliot Ngok in almost all the series this year? This year, I already saw him continuously in ‘Outbound Love’ (as a photography-loving father), then in ‘Gilded Chopsticks’ (as an old emperor) and now here in ‘Storm in a Cocoon’ (as a rich businessman). Anyway, he is a very superb veteran actor. Always nailed all the supporting roles he had taken.
I watched the final two episodes just now. Hmm…I felt that the conclusion is too ‘simply’ done; the main villain gets caught and then killed so easily in just the first few minutes of the finale. Then, the lack of budget (typical for TVB series) made the flood scene to be not intense at all. And the part where Bing Bing gets on the floating signboard while Ka Yeung couldn’t and just stay by the side reminds me of Jack and Rose’s scene in ‘Titanic’. Haha. Luckily, the final few minutes that replay the flashbacks and depicting reunion of Ka Yeung (lost his memory) and Bing Bing are very touching and save the day. Overall, this is a fairly good series. There were still some boring scenes, and annoyingly too many characters dying, but with a fairly good plot, great casts, nice theme song and many ‘worked’ twists, I still consider this series the best in this first quarter of the year. (I prefer serious drama more than comedy like ‘Gilded Chopsticks’). Out of 10 points, I rate ‘Storm in a Cocoon’ a total of 7.7. Haha…I realized the title of this drama tells the many problems (symbolize those with storm) Ka Yeung has to go through and in the end, he literally faces the real storm too (hence the title).
(Images in this post are from various sources throughout the world wide web)
