First released in Malaysia on last November, ‘The Offliners’ is finally getting its local release in Hong Kong end of last month. Since most of its episodes are released in January, I consider it as a 2021 series rather than 2020. Hence, this is the first TVB series of the year that I have completed watching. And it looks like TVB is now fine to release Jacqueline Wong’s dramas after her explosive scandal with Andy Hui in 2019.
‘The Offliners’ is a 20-episode drama that revolves on a nerd yet an IT genius (Owen Cheung) who begins to develop his passion on IT and joined a tech start-up company. He then grow close with his colleagues, his love interest (Moon Lau) and also his lady boss (Katy Kung) who he later developed feeling for as well. Besides Owen, Katy and Moon, the series also starred Jacqueline Wong, Karl Ting, Jason Chan, Brian Tse, Joseph Lee, Bowie Wu, Akina Hong, Suet Nei, etc.
This drama is never meant to be big but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s relaxing and entertaining to watch it every evening after work. Owen Cheung is very convincing in this role and I can see his effort in portraying as a nerd in this drama. He nailed it. Katy Kung is also doing well as the first female lead here and she has a good chemistry with Owen too. She is very natural and I do impressed with her emotional scenes. It looks like Owen can just pair very well with any actors/actresses in any dramas he is in.
This pair did well on last Sunday too when they won Most Popular TV Male and Female Character respectively at the TVB Anniversary Awards for their performance in ‘Al Cappuccino’ and ‘Hong Kong Love Stories’. I do see huge improvement from their acting over the years and it looks like they are prepared for more leading roles.
Even the supporting cast are doing great in the series. Every characters including the supporting ones are given important story to develop and no one is left out. Particular credit to Joseph Lee as the stern father who turns good in the end and Akina Hong who portrayed his wife for her breakdown scenes after the death of her son. As for Moon Lau, I just don’t like her voice and expression that seems to be acting cute the entire time. I knew she didn’t mean it but that’s all I can see from her performance. She needs to broaden her range of expressions and work on her voice too maybe.
‘The Offliners’ is not pretentious and is able to deliver on what it needed to be from its straightforward and light-hearted plot and solid acting. Out of 10 points, I rate ‘The Offliners’ a total of 7.7. Yes…tomorrow is Friday already. Weekend is coming!
(Images in this post are from various online sources)