A long week with toothache and lacking concentration at work is certainly not good. Fortunately, the week ends with me being very delighted to be able to get my hand on a latest music DVD all the way from Hong Kong and also being thrilled with the final episode of a TVB drama that I have been following for the past one month. The drama is called ‘The Learning Curve Of A Warlord’ (大帥哥).
This 30-episode drama starred Dicky Cheung who is promoted to a marshal in control of a small town during chaotic warlord era. From there, he faces multiple threats and challenges from three neighbouring town’s warlords, the higher rank marshal, Japanese spies, etc along with his loyal friends and three wives. Other cast in the series include Sisley Choi, Zoie Tam, Vivien Yeo, Raymond Cho, Tony Hung, Tsui Wing, etc.
This drama is very impressive. When I first know the existence of this drama and learning a bit of what the story is going to be about and its setting, I felt that this is going to be a lousy, silly and meaninglessly funny drama and that’s it. The selling point would just be the comeback of Dicky Cheung who is famous for his work in TVB decades ago (Journey to the West, etc). In the end, I’m very surprised by how good the drama turns out to be, in all areas.
Dicky Cheung is amazing as Dik Kei / Dai Sui Gor. I am very impressed by his memory skill. He can memorize super long lines of dialogue and spill them out clear, fast, continuous and sharp, along with varied range of expression he delivered in the same time. It’s perfect ‘multitasking while acting’ (that’s another level) if you know what I mean. His performance in here is no doubt splendid and him not winning best actor in last month’s TVB Anniversary Awards is totally absurd. His performance in just the first 10 episodes in this drama (before the awards ceremony) is more than enough to defeat any contenders in 2018 including the best actor winner, Joe Ma. I also got to know that Dicky do improvise certain lines of his as well as of the other cast to improve things. Now, that is great.
The supporting cast also have their shining moment in this drama. They are not left out of their character development and story arc which is good. Zoie Tam and Vivien Yeo (both portrayed as Dicky’s wives) surprised audiences with their excellent performances (both of them improved a lot and outshines the supporting boys in the drama) while the main female lead, Sisley Choi is also not bad (it is just that she couldn’t push it all out in her acting and her character’s personality is partly to blame and hence not getting higher praise compared to Zoie and Vivien).
This series has a lot of dramatic things going on to keep audiences hooked to its episode every evening. It has a lot of hilarious scenes (funny lines and multiple thoughtful reference to famous Dicky’s lines from his past memorable roles), emotional moments (a number of pretty good and heartfelt crying scenes), intense gun fighting sequence, and warm friendship moments. The final episode is intense, unpredictable, exciting. has happy conclusion, and left me moved, thrilled and impressed once again. ‘The Learning Curve Of A Warlord’ performs beyond my expectation and I would rate it a total of 8.4 out of 10. This is my most favourite TVB drama in 2018. Highly entertaining, has great ingredients and I enjoyed it very much.
(Images in this post are from online sources)