‘Apple-Colada’ (果欄中的江湖大嫂) is a Hong Kong television series that centered on the life in fruit market. It starred Alice Chan as a debt-ridden retired actress who move back to Hong Kong from Malaysia to seek refuge with her niece (Eliza Sam) after her nasty divorce with ex-husband. They together run a fruit market previously owned by her deceased older brother and has been seized by a man (Tommy Wong) and his son (Raymond Wong). This drama has 30 episodes and is seen as an unrelated sequel to the 2016’s ‘My Dangerous Mafia Retirement Plan’ that saw some similar cast. The drama also starred Mat Yeung, Crystal Fung, Carlo Ng, Lau Kong, Kaman Kong, Andrew Yuen, etc.
The drama at first (its first few episodes) is quite interesting and that has successfully got me to catch up to the rest of the series. However, as the drama progresses, I find that the storyline to be draggy with nothing much particularly exciting or interesting going on. The plot is also very much predictable especially with the sudden appearance of Carlo Ng and Raymond Wong’s biological parents in the series. From there on, I already knew Carlo Ng would be the bad guy and yup, I was right. There is nothing new or anything worth mentioning from this series.
It is still a light-hearted drama with some funny scenes and warm family or romantic moments. But doing just that will make the series being easily not memorable and in average. I couldn’t pay my attention while watching it as there is no climax or cool stuff to get me engaged into the story and the characters. Alice Chan is a good actress and I’m fine with her leading the series. She also fits well to this role. On the other hand, Eliza Sam is awful in this series. I couldn’t stand her acting in this drama as she kept on forcing herself to raise her voice to suit her character in this drama which is totally unnecessary and annoying. She really needs to improve on her acting. With much lesser leading actresses in TVB now, she really has to do a lot of work. She felt very unnatural and I couldn’t avoid noticing that in almost every scene she was in. Raymond Wong is fine but his role with that wild and bad judgement makes his character unlikable.
The series concluded with a happy ending as predicted. Nothing new again. There are still some things (story arc) not completely resolved like unknown conclusion to Eliza Sam’s cousin brother who fall in love with Mat Yeung’s sister from the first time he met her, Lau Kong’s health condition after the trouble with the gangster hiding drugs in his fruit boxes, Andrew Yuen letting Alice Chan go so easily without much heartbreak, etc. There is not much effort and passion put in to make this a good drama, and that’s a waste considering I do have interest on its main story that is based on the fruit market setting. Out of 10 points, I rate ‘Apple-Colada’ a total of 6.3.
(Images in this post are from various sources throughout the world wide web)