It’s going to be a long week ahead that begins with Monday blues today. I’m getting jealous by the two days of holiday Malaysia is observing today and tomorrow in conjunction with Agong’s Birthday and Awal Muharram. They have a decent long weekend to enjoy while I’m here mumbling on why Singapore has so few public holidays annually. Not a single public holiday for this month as well as for next month. The next one will be Deepavali that falls somewhere in mid November if I’m not mistaken.
As for the short last weekend, I managed to catch a movie with my friend (my movie review for ‘The Nun’ in my previous post), saw a carnival in a mall selling various brands of mooncakes as the Mid-Autumn Festival is just around the corner (didn’t buy any as they are too expensive although I love to eat mooncake), and watching Cantonese drama (my favourite thing to do when I’m free) in a marathon mode. I think I watched 10 episodes in a row yesterday.
The drama that I’m talking about is ‘Another Era’, a 34-episode drama that acts as an unrelated sequel to 1999’s ‘At The Threshold Of An Era’ and both of them are based on the theme of Hong Kong’s financial business. ‘Another Era’ starred Roger Kwok, Niki Chow, Tavia Yeung, Frankie Lam, Benjamin Yuen, Pakho Chau, etc. I am not particularly interested on the ‘finance’ part of the drama (I don’t even bother or can’t even understand certain difficult terminology typically observed in finance sector used in this drama). However, I’m kind of being attracted to the strong cast from this drama (a number of nice veteran actors, and glad to see Linda Chung again in a drama although she only has a supporting role here).
The drama builds up pretty slowly (fortunately, it’s not being dragged too long and made to end in less than 40 episodes which is still not too bad) and from the very beginning, you already know who is going to be the bad guy and that person is certainly going to lose big in the very end. Roger Kwok took on that role (he is very experienced in portraying villain character). However, I’m starting to feel bored of his same old evil facial expression that I have seen before in his previous work like ‘Last One Standing’, ‘Black Heart White Soul’ and ‘Dead Wrong’. Nevertheless, I do enjoy his acting as usual. He is a solid actor. Frankie Lam on the other hand isn’t doing well. He is too wooden and his presence made me felt bored. His story arc with Linda Chung also felt detached from the main story. Benjamin is getting a very likable character here and his death near the end gave a much needed hit/climax. Pakho Chau is on the opposite and his character is pretty annoying (being a lazy games addict guy, not appreciating his good friends, getting mad over small matter easily, knew that his close buddy love him and yet ignoring her even till the end of the drama).
As for the females, Niki Chow outshines Tavia Yeung. That’s good. Tavia has been given a lot of chance in her previous works (she won best actress before too) and it is very welcoming to put more attention to the other female lead, Niki Chow. And she deserves that attention. She handled this role very well (being the saddest role in this drama; losing her two brothers, struggling so much to lead the huge company his father left behind without any experience, losing her father and then losing her boyfriend). Now, I think she do have a chance for best actress award this year only if many others try to pay more attention to her performance here. By the way, Tavia turning the tide and going against her husband (Roger Kwok) near the end is so predictable and hence, that plot twist didn’t work out well. Last but not least, I also find the forceful insertion of few actors from mainland China just to attract more viewers from mainland China is very unnecessary and off putting (Linda Chung’s segment too but that’s still fine because it’s refreshing to see her). Their unimportant and boring storyline do not mix well to the main plot. Out of 10 points, I rate ‘Another Era’ a total of 7.0. A solid drama that could have been more intense (I see a lot of potential for this drama to be a thrilling one but the outcome only reaches halfway of that mark) to keep viewers engaged.
(Images in this post are from various sources throughout the world wide web)