It’s just the mid of July and I have already completed 9 TVB series. It looks like I’m going to break the record of having watched most number of TVB series by end of this year. Well, it is highly possible since I have been spending more time at home now like everyone else due to the current pandemic.
‘Murder Diary’ is a 25-episode series that revolves on a police officer, King Fung who has dissociative identity disorder caused by his mother, Bik Sum who herself suffers from mental disorder and almost killed him and his younger sister when they were children. The series starred Vincent Wong, Kara Hui, Philip Keung, Benjamin Yuen, Mandy Wong, Chris Lai, Alice Chan, Venus Wong, etc.
The plot isn’t as simple as what I have described above. In fact, it is way far more complicated and is quite hard to digest if you don’t really invest into the series as it progresses. I find it difficult to invest into it due to the boring storyline despite featuring some bizarre crime cases. The dark colour palette for the visual made the series very distressing. The story also features many ‘crazy’ characters that made it not family-friendly. I do admire the effort by the production team on this fresh new attempt to deviate from typical light-hearted themed series but the outcome for this one just didn’t quite appeal to me.
Anyway, the drama do contains excellent performances by the cast, particularly Kara Hui. She is well known for portraying emotionally unstable characters (and thus won many acting awards before) and this role should give not much of a challenge to her. She is very good but I felt that she had portrayed such characters countless of times. Vincent Wong also shines for portraying his character that has split personality. He can change realistically from one personality to another in a second. Both of them had a shot to clinch best actor and actress respectively again for this year’s awards ceremony.
Vincent is good but he always has no chemistry with his on-screen partner. He isn’t compatible at all with both Mandy and Venus in here. By the way, this line-up of cast is so similar to another past TVB series called ‘The Defected’. Almost the same cast. I prefer to shake up the cast a bit by replacing Benjamin and Mandy as both of them delivered nothing to the show. Always wooden acting from both of them. Out of 10 points, I rate ‘Murder Diary’ a total of 6.0; quite low rating because it doesn’t appeal to me. Everything just went too dark and complicated. All the points are given for only the acting and the fresh direction used.
Next up is my review for ‘Plan B’, a much light-hearted series (also has 25 episodes) that revolves on the hardship of a couple in bringing up their young daughter while attending to the challenges posed by their own family members and jobs. The series which starred Kenneth Ma, Eliza Sam, Kiki Sheung, Mimi Kung, Hugo Wong, Joseph Lee, Yoyo Chen, Jonathan Cheung, etc is an indirect sequel to another popular series in the past called ‘Who Wants A Baby?’.
I do have a good time watching this series and each episode taught us on a lot of meaningful life lessons (like the need to be more positive, accepting, patient and understanding, etc) derived from the storyline of the series itself as it moves forward. Kenneth is really very suited for this kind of family-guy role while Eliza is not the best pick, but I can see that she has placed effort to portray the female lead role here. She isn’t an experienced actress and her delivery of dialogues may appear unnatural at times but overall it is still bearable. The veteran actors and actresses are all very solid in their roles as the parents of Kenneth and Eliza. They played huge roles to hold the series well and they deserves huge compliment, if not awards.
Out of 10 points, I rate ‘Plan B’ a total of 7.8. Quite engaging and touching at times, this series do connects with the audiences because of the realistic portrayals of hardship of a young family of which many will feel very relatable to. Alright. That’s all for my reviews to these two dramas. It turns out to be quite a lengthy post already.
(Images in this post are from various online sources)