final_flash

This is a pretty good show but one thing ruins it for me

I’ll admit, I loved the first Big White Duel season, so I was hoping for more awesomeness in this. I suspended my disbelief for some of the miraculous surgeries carried out in this drama by the amazing cast, and I can ignore some of the small plotholes it presents, but one thing I could mot forgive is Natalie Tong. Why does she nearly always play a dumb character in these dramas? I really, really hated her character Cherry in My Unfair Lady and how she treated Vincent Wong I wanted to throw my teacup at my TV, and here she does it again by being an unbelievable idiot that it blows my mind. In the drama it shows she made some past decisions that were extremely childish and selfish, and in the present day while dating Kenneth Ma’s character Dr. Tong Ming, she again makes stupid decisions that lead to her misfortune - her own fault - and she decides to just be friends with Tong Ming. Like wtf? This show should he an 8 or 9, but her character pulls it down to a 7.

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What drugs were they taking to make this?

Man, as I have seen the previous Flying Tiger I knew what to expect from this formulaic series, but I was not prepared for the new depths of suspended disbelief I had to sit through. Many big TVB names are here like Kenneth Ma and Michael Miu, and my favourite wonky canto actor Michael Wong was in it as well speaking in his unique way, but this is all ruined by the inclusion of Lee Pace. Don't mistaken me, Lee is a great actor and has done amazing stuff, but h is completely wasted here in this series. Some scenes with him had me go "what the fish?" because it made no sense, like throwing a can of... I think shaving cream... into a microwave, which destroys a house. That had me laughing so hard! And when Lee Pace's character sees his parents die, the shots to show how sad he was was done so poorly I had to shake my head, and I never do that, and he gets over his parents death so quickly I got massive whiplash. Also, talking about his parents, the terrorists of the drama held his parents hostage so that Lee's character would comply to their demands, but before Lee could carry out any instructions the terrorists kill them anyway, losing any leverage they had on him, and yet he continued to follow their instructions. What sort of writing is that? Man, there is suspension of disbelief, but here you need to be suspended by a cliff to follow this properly.

On the bright side, great soundtrack.

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A darn good sci-fi chinese action movie

Man, everybody laughed and said it was too risky when Louis Koo wanted to make this movie, but hot dang it is one of the best - if not the best - chinese sci-fi movies made in recent memory. The special effects do range between convincing to a little awkward in some scenes, but overall this is awesome and full of incredible action set pieces that I would say are near-Hollywood quality. The story is something that we’re already seen before. Humanity has ruined the atmosphere and made the air toxic, and to top it off a meteor falls onto Earth in district B12 and an alien plant life form sprouts from it uncontrollably every so often, threatening life on Earth. Sure, many common tropes are in play here and recycled, but it is done here very well is a roster of huge HK stars to carry it. I had a lot of fun watching it and it is worth rewatching in future for the great action

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I really wanted to like this drama

I really wanted to like this drama but sorry, it is just terrible. Charlene Choi plays JD, a forensic scientist who is great at her job but is completely socially awkward, similar to Temperence Brennan from the US TV series bones, but lacks her sex appeal. The story mixed her into some random stuff that made no sense; it is so contrived I actually felt my head spin.

The male lead is played by Jospeh Chang and he is definitely not a Seeley Booth, in fact he is a hot headed idiot who barely gets anything done right. The two mains have no chemistry at all so I didn’t care what happened between them. Watching Joseph constantly use mandarin to speak to the guys who ALL use canto got really obnoxious because he had no charm to him at all, he is just this hot headed bull that does stupid stuff and occasionally throws bad canto phrases at people. To be honest, I only watched this to the end because of Law Kar Ying, Kenny Wong and Michael Tao, legendary TVB actors. Everybody else was meh.

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What the heck is this?

After watching two incredible dramas with Kenneth Ma this year I thought TVB were only going to get better, but instead we get this abomination. Ruco Chan really is unlucky, the first drama with him as lead this year is a pile of manure and that breaks my heart. I really like Ruco and I really want him to be in an awesome, likeable role, but here his acting is just mediocre. It is not his fault as we've all seen him be awesome, but the role he was given is just... meh.

Besides from him, the other main characters are just annoying. Mandy Wong here plays a pretty pitiful role, but her being this huge pushover just had me so angry because her meekness goes from pitiful to just pathetic. Roxanne Tong has a main role as a cop here, but she is so irritating to watch because her acting is awful and she has no chemistry at all with any of the other characters of the show. She just spends the entire time failing as a cop and following Ruco Chan like a leech because of her hunches with little reason to do so. Kenneth Ma needs to show her how its done, man.

One thing that also did not fail to get my blood boiling is Angelina Lo. Every single role I see her in gets me mad because she aways plays the same whiney, moany annoying f'ing old woman that is so unlikeable it makes me want to throw my phone at the TV. She has been typecast into the rich annoying old woman role and I get it, she is really good at it, but whenever I hear her voice or see her on the TV I automatically brace myself for the inevitable wave of anger to crash over me like a tidal wave of diarrhoea.

The best part of the entire drama is Hugo Ng as this massive a'hole father to Mandy Wong's character, who just got out of prison after 30 years. He is allowed to let loose and overact to his heart's content, just eating up every single scene he is in by being the rowdy and unpredictable villain and it is just joyous to watch him in action. If this drama did not have him in it it would not even be worth watching. I am watching this purely for Hugo, more crazy Hugo please!!

EDIT: my goodness, I really want Angelina Lo and Roxanne Tong to just stop acting in this drama already. If they die I will celebrate, damn they are both as annoying as each other.

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A great entry in the Rosy Business series

I have seen all 3 previous Rosy Business dramas, and I was so disappointed with the 3rd entry. It lacked Sheren Tang, but if the replacement female lead was good it would still shine. We had Myolie Wu who did her best but yeah... it was still a very disappointing drama. The twin brother story and the lack of any real romance was a real turn off for me.

This 4th entry still did not bring back Sheren Teng, instead it brought back Nancy Wu as the female lead when she only had supporting roles in the previous entries but dang... I really liked her in the role. The comparisons with Sheren Tang are unavoidable - as expected because she was playing a strong female leader type role - but I found myself actually really enjoying myself watching her in this drama. I know, this would be blasphemy for some people, but I found Nancy's scenes of vulnerability more convincing as she openly admits her feelings to the male lead and it doesn't wait until near the end of the drama, something that Sheren Tang never really did. I also loved how Nancy had so many outfits in the drama, even if some of them made her look like a Christmas tree, but I loved that she had such a varied collection of clothes to wear as it reflected her status on the show and what lady doesn't like to have many dresses? I know I love to have many! She plays a General Manager at a bank during 1920s Shanghai and is nicknamed the 7th Elder because her financial power ranks at number7 in the whole of Shanghai. Of course, in this position she has many enemies that want her to fail, especially her brothers. Oh yes, most of the plot is driven by one of her brothers as I will explain later.

Wayne Lai is - as always - amazing here. His character Chai Sup Chat was great to watch as he played a really stubborn businessman who kept failing at business because of his bad people skills. However, as an advisor in investment opportunities, he will always give excellent advice to return a profit to those willing to listen. He spends the start of the drama butting heads with Nancy Wu, but their interactions throughout the drama made their growing romantic feelings for each other very believable to me. I know many would say Wayne looks way too old for Nancy, but I disagree because love comes in many different strange forms, and how they drag each other out of dire situations they themselves could not have survived alone was a convincing reason for them to develop feelings for each other.

Spoiler warning: A great scene that was unexpected and quite refreshing was when Nancy took Wayne out for a trip to a beautiful dock and then she outright tells Wayne that she wanted to be with him. A woman declaring her love for a man and wanting to be with them was a big deal in the past because it was nearly always the man to make the first move. Wayne's shock and subsequent rejection, because he felt he was not up to her level and therefore felt he didn't qualify, led to one of the most dramatic scenes in the drama. Nancy was very rich and very beautiful, and she put aside her pride to do it, so the rejection was a huge humiliation for her. Gosh, I really felt bad her and I was screaming at Wayne, like wtf were you doing man? He clearly liked her as well, but his low self-esteem held him back from making that step.

Next we have to talk about Joey Law. I never liked his acting in previous dramas but he has improved a lot in this one, being this retired mercenary who would kill for money. His acting is still a little wooden, but it matched the role he played as a guy trying to escape his mercenary past and trying to live a normal life so that he could be with the girl who he had loved since they were kids. The action scenes with him fighting and showing off his physical prowess more than made up for his wooden acting, and he clearly bulked up for the role.

And who was he in love with in the drama? Why, Hera Chan of course! She was okay I guess, and this time the producers knew her long neck was something quite distracting so her outfits all had collars to help reduce the appearance of that neck. Thank you so much for that! She was pretty average overall with no real captivating scenes, but earlier in the drama she got on my nerves a bit for being this girl who would run off on her own because she wanted to see Joey. Luckily, this improved later on after her family accepted Joey and his past.

But boy, the person I really wanted to talk about was Edwin Siu. He had so many roles in this drama that I lost count. He played the half brother of Nancy Wu's character and he was trying to get his revenge on her, but there are so many plot twists involving him that it made my head spin, and yet it led to him being one of the most memorable villains in TVB history. When you first meet him in the drama, you'd notice how he kept "dying" and yet somehow managed to return with the same appearance but with a different name and a completely different personality. Edwin really had me intrigued as to what on Earth was going on and every time he was onscreen you had no idea what he was going to do next, and that type of chaos was what made him such a scary villain. He nearly managed to win as well, which I found quite a nice change, but it came down to a last minute save that was a little disappointing. I'll explain why later.

Although I really liked this drama, I still had a few scenes that had me going what? for example, Wayne Lai later started working for Nancy because he helped her deal with a huge issue previously, and as part of his condition to join he wanted to fire a group of women who were bad for the company. Nancy agreed to this numerous times and yet somehow, these people who were fired all came back or never left in the first place even when all evidence proved Wayne correct. And then later, they all get along as if this never happened in the first place. That was such lazy writing like what were they thinking?

Spoiler warning: And then we have the main villain played by Edwin Siu. He was such a great bad guy to watch from beginning to end, knowing how to fight and how to manipulate people so well, however he ended up revealing everything in episode 23, and just as he was about to win he gets shot to death by his "mother" for everything he had done up to that point. What I hated about this was that we were told how poor his "mother's" eyesight was, barely being able to see 1 foot in front of herself, and yet from 20 meters away she managed to shoot Edwin accurately with her handgun. And to top it off, the drama was 25 episodes long, so we had 2 episodes after where the Director had to force something else in to keep things interesting for the viewers, so - predictably - he shoved in a Japanese invasion to raise the stakes before the end. To be honest, the 4th entry could have ended at episode 23 because despite both main protagonist hard-headedness, Nancy decided to travel to Hong Kong (watch the drama to find out why) to meet with Wayne Lai and they had a great reunion where she sang to him while he was missing her. That would have been a good ending there.

Spoiler warning: So, the last 2 episodes did drag it out a bit with Nancy suffering poor memory due to a bullet injury slowly causing memory loss, but I got to admit the ending was great and I did like it a lot. Nancy gets lost in Hong Kong later and could not remember how to get back home, so she ends up in Kowloon. Wayne spends 3 years looking for her, and finally finds her during a Japanese bombing run. He finally managed to take her home where many other plot threads are also tied up. Wayne got to spend the next 28 years with Nancy proposing to her every year, with her telling him each time she would think about it when they were clearly already together. The final scene had them really old and together, which was a very romantic scene that was very touching. It made me forgive the dragging out of the final two episodes.

I loved this latest entry of Rosy Business and I personally recommend it, and I can see myself rewatching this in future because the ending was just great. Unlike the endings from the other entries where there was no romance at all or it was very short-lived, this showed them being together happily for many years. I know many would compare it to the ones with Sheren Tang and voice their disappointment, but my opinion is that the torch has been handed over from Sheren to Nancy, and Nancy did a great job!

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An okay drama that’s just mid

Everything about this drama is just mid. Average. Okay. There is nothing outstanding about it, it spends most of the time just cruising along as medium speed and medium pace with hardly any strong emotional investment in any of the characters. Wayne Lai is completely wasted here as the character he plays is completely two-dimensional as this nice guy ex-stuntman and this does not change even 21 episodes in, and I know it will not change due to the pacing and story beats happening. The only character worth watching is again with the awesome Rebecca Zhu as this strange wildcard of a person who suddenly returns home. Despite her past being the most interesting, it is barely touched upon, again wasting a huge opportunity. I really wanted to like this drama because Brian Chu gets to be a lead character and I do thoroughly like his acting such as in Al Cappacino, but here he is like a plank of wood with rarely any facial emotions outside of his typical thousand yard stare. Overall, this is not a bad drama, but it’s nothing exceptional either, it is just average and that is a huge shame.

Update: I just completed watching this series today and well… it is still pretty average. There were some touching moments, but overall it doesn’t shift my rating. What I found hilarious at the end was the romance between Brian Chu and Rebecca Zhu’s characters. Brian just suddenly blurts out “Hey, let’s be together” but he doesn’t love her and she just brushes it off. This made sense as they both has no romantic moments together in the drama. But, suddenly, in the final episode in a flash forward to the future scene for 1 minute we see the implication that they are together without the show outright stating it. Yes, it is really cheap for not showing us them getting to the romance stage, but at least I can say it is a better love story then Twilight. Literally.

You know, the entire show kept asking if 輕功 was an actual thing, and we see some implications that 輕功 does indeed exist, but I think the show missed out on an opportunity here. If 輕功 was real in the world of the drama, surely 氣功 is real, and if 氣功 is real then surely 九陽神功 is real, and if 九陽神功 is real…

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Meh.

This drama had me excited because Roger Kwok was back! But omg it was a huge disappointing load of crap. Roger plays a very rich gold retailer but he had a bunch of really dumb kids who have no idea wtf they are doing. To top things off, Roger also had a brain tumor so was slowly dying from it. To combat this, he decided to marry Hera Chan, this assistant of his that was also 100% in love with Roger. The classic family anti-marriage arguments ensued with all the classic boring tropes. The most interesting part of the drama at the beginning was literally the intro sequence, which had each member of Roger’s family wearing jewellery that had an animal that represented their personality. I thought that was pretty clever, but it was a shame that every single person in the drama - outside of one or two people - suuuuuucked.

Roger in the drama had 3 sons and a single daughter. Two of the sons played by Matthew Ho and Andrew Chan were completely useless and stupid, to such a degree that I actively hated the scenes they were in. Andrew Chan is definitely not ready for a main role. The third son played by Joey Law was smarter but his wooden acting made his scenes boring af to watch. And man the daughter, she was boring I couldn’t even bother looking for her name.

So all the sons and their wives hated Hera Chan as they thought she was only with Roger for his money. The hate for her was constant, with Hera getting always getting bullied because she was trying to be a good person. I got so angry at how Hera would put up with so much abuse and not retaliate. She only got interesting in the final 5 or so episodes after her husband was murdered and she had enough so decided to stick up for herself. She openly challenged the family after this and it became much better, but it was too little too late! You don’t have a 25 episode drama and have the only good part at the end! That’s insanity!

The best part of the drama was actually with Him Law. After watching him in roles where it he was this stubborn and impulsive idiot, this drama had him play a role of a very intelligent and level headed man who can solve nearly any problem. He ran a financial consultancy firm that helped rich people invest their money and he really helped Roger Kwok out to deal with his family matters. When we watch the drama we suspected he was out for revenge on Roger’s family because his ex-gf married Matthew Ho, but it turned out Him Law discovered Roger had recommended business to him when he was starting out to help him get back on his feet. Him Law saw Roger Kwok as a benefactor and was repaying his kindness.

So who was the big bad? Weirdly enough it was Mimi Kung. She was in love with Roger but he never paid her any mind, so she ended up with his older brother instead, who was heir to the family business. Later when her husband died in an accident, Roger became the new heir as the rules were it had to pass to a male member of the family, and Mimi only had a daughter. This pissed Mimi off enough to plot for decades and take over the business by having Roger poisoned so his brain tumor would burst, and then having a trust fund with her as the named executor so she could take it all. Her plot was obviously foiled but man the ending was so crap that I stopped caring.

If you wondered why Roger Kwok never appeared in the TVB 2025 awards, this is why. He knew this drama sucked.

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Bosco steals the show!

Yeah Charmaine Sheh is great as usual in this but man the star who stole show was Bosco Wong. Watching him constantly drinking milk to promote the sponsor was something I got used to because watching Bosco in action was just so much fun. He is this sleazy, ambitious and manipulative bastard who is just a joy to watch in action. The best scenes are him laughing at people’s reactions and commenting on them, such as when he invited Kenneth Ma’s parents to speak to his AI avatar and his parents asked the AI “how are you feeling?” And Bosco immediately laughed saying “How are you feeling? What a stupid question to ask an AI.”

Some of the character are extra annoying this time around like Hera Chan’s weird fixation on trying to cancel Charmaine and Selena Lee being a terrible leader, but the most annoying character is Venus Wong and her relationship with James Ng. Man, I really did not care about their relationship and watching them was just pure cringe.

Luckily, Bosco himself is more than enough to bring me back to watch this. He won TVB Best Actor 2025 for this role for a good reason.

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Yawn, boring!

When I saw the trailers for this I was hyped for the series. It looked like Moses Chan was going to be a modern day Wong Fei Hung: martial arts mixed with TCM doing righteous stuff in modern Hong Kong. But nooooo. This is one boring throw away drama from TVB to fill a gap in their programming in 2025 and for Moses to meet his contractual obligations. This was so boring I only kept watching because I paid to watch it and I wasn’t going to waste my money.

So Moses late father started a TCM medicinal oil company and managed to make it successful. Moses, instead of taking it over and helping his mom played by Angelina Lo, decided to leave the company in the hands of his maternal uncle and his wife and son. Who does that? We see part of the reason why was because he wanted to create his own medicinal oil line. Now you gotta think, why could he not just use his dad’s company to promote and sell his new medicinal oil? It was a well established brand already, it makes marketing sense.

We also discover Moses gave up being a TCM practitioner because he could not save his sister, played by using Rosita Kwok, ending with her passing away. This was such a blow to him that he stopped practicing TCM. Luckily he later decided to practice again after his love interest, played by Kelly Cheung, persuaded him since he could save people. Now Rosita had cerebral palsy, which has no cure, so I don’t know why Moses was beating himself up over TCM not working. He already knew there was no cure and his sister was also receiving western treatment, there was nothing more he could have done.

The drama was very predictable and it went through the typical TVB company embezzlement and family fortune nonsense we expected. Karl Ting played Moses cousin, and he along with his mother, played by Elvina Kong, were absolutely hateful in this drama. They had no redeeming qualities as every time they were onscreen they were arrogant and vindictive and disrespected Moses and his mom constantly. The drama was already boring, but adding to the crap factor were these two characters that were both so one-dimensional it became a farce.

Talking of characters I hated, Moon Lau’s role as an insurance broker who would sleep with clients to get the sale made my stomach churn. Her character was despicable and the drama had her sleep with Karl Ting and his father played by Timothy Cheng. Oh my gosh, when I saw it happen - in the same episode no less - I felt sick to my stomach. In the drama Karl knew his dad had unloaded inside her and yet he thought yes I’ll add to that congee. No! What are doing?

Mark Ma also exists in this drama as Moses’ best friend and sidekick, but he really had no reason to exist. You could remove him completely and the drama would still unfold as expected. They added him in there almost as an afterthought.

The drama’a only redeeming factors were allowing Angelina Lo play a genuinely nice character for a change instead of the hateful angry old woman she usually portrays. This made for a nice change as I usually only see her in roles where she is this angry woman and I really despise her in those roles. The other is seeing Moses Chan doing some real cool poses during some of the fight scenes he gets to do. However, to counter that, he never does a lot of fighting nor does he explain how he learned to fight since flashbacks do not show his father teaching him anything. It was as if suddenly Moses was some kinda kung fu genius.

I am overall very disappointed in this drama. There was potential here completely wasted. If they made this a Moses Chan wandering Hong Kong helping people and healing them it would have been cooler. Maybe make him meet an opponent who was too strong so he had to visit his master to learn the final 3 techniques that combined kung fu and TCM to defeat opponent, which he then used to defeat his opponent in a tournament… man that would have been so cool! Instead we have this throwaway filler drama to fill a programming gap in 2025. Terrible ah.

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A disappointing drama despite having legendary actors

You know, I wondered if anything else could take legendary actors and put them in average dramas for us to watch like they did with Bowie Lam and D.I.D 12 this year, and this gave me my answer. Yes. You have proper great actors like Jordan Chan and Simon Yam that do amazing jobs in their roles, and yet the drama is terrible. Just awful!

So what is the story? The driving plot of the whole drama is that some white dude with a beard, who is in a room with huge monitors showing stock market trends, wants the Hong Kong stock market to crash. Why? I don’t know. He just wants it to happen gosh darn it! To make it happen he has some outside help to make it happen like this woman with an Australian accent called Anna and this crazy gangster played by Peter Ho. I cannot hear half the stuff the white dude says because he speaks too quietly and slurs his words together. And he is always seen in that huge room with the monitors with huge graphs and is never seen anywhere else, even as the drama ends he is still there throwing a tantrum. Because we never get a clear motivation on why he is targeting Hong Kong specifically, it is all very shallow and we get no depth. It is just “me want HK economy to collapse, lol” and that’s it. Wtf? Why not the UK? Why not USA? Heck, why not Singapore? Nope, is had to be Hong Kong

The drama starts off with a sting gone wrong. Jordan Chan is part of the Organized Crime department. He and his mentor try to arrest a group of gangsters in a sting operation, but Peter Ho - as the boss of the gangsters - managed to strap an explosive watch onto Jordan’s mentor’s wrist. He makes Jordan beg for his mentor’s life before pressing the button to activate his mentor’s explosive watch anyway. His mentor jumps into the water to save Jordan’s life while Peter uploads part of a clip he recorded of Jordan begging to make it look like he was begging for his own life.

Jordan later gets moved from Organized Crime
to the EU department because of what happened. He refuses to explain to his wife what happened that day, thus driving a wedge between them, and everyone thinks Jordan is a coward.

While in the EU team he meets his new team, which includes the nearly retired EU driver played by Simon Yam. Jordan continues his investigation into Peter Ho while doing his EU duties despite not being allowed to investigate crimes anymore.

Jordan has some great scenes showing off his police sense and understanding how to approach situations to deescalate and handle situations well. He also has great observation skills and notices things that others can miss. When he is doing this stuff he is great to watch, but then we have scenes where he is trying to be a better husband and father. These scenes are difficult to watch because he and the woman who plays his wife - Lynn Hung - have nooo chemistry at all. Just none! Even when they start to make improvement in their relationship, you don’t see them as husband and wife and just as friends who happen to live together.

Was Peter Ho a good villain? Despite spending the entire drama speaking mandarin to Jordan, I found this to be the best move to make because that was his native language and he was able to emote really well. I found him equally fun to watch and menacing at the same time because he had the charisma to appear like a gang leader while demonstrating in many scenes how smart and tactical he was at planning operations against the cops. The only thing that ruined his character was how he could have easily just shot Jordan at the beginning and prevented all the headaches Jordan would give him, but he instead let Jordan live to suffer the death of someone close to him (his mentor). I found that really dumb. He dies at the end after kidnapping Jordan’s wife and locking her in a police van filled with C4 explosives, telling Jordan it came time for Jordan to pay. That made ask why didn’t he shoot Jordan in episode 1?! Come on! Jordan manages to finally shoot Peter in the neck, setting off the C4 bomb countdown as the timer was linked to Peter’s heartbeat.

Then we have Aarif Lee who plays a fellow EU officer. He has a particular bias against Jordan because after the incident with the mentor, Aarif’s father made the decision to keep Jordan in the police force, which cost him a potential promotion. Despite witnessing great police work done by Jordan, Aarif spends most of the first half of the drama just being an unreasonable prick against Jordan. This got really annoying really fast and should have been resolved much sooner.

The drama tried to be more international so it had a mix of many languages in it, from cantonese to mandarin to hindi to english. The problem is that this got very annoying to watch as you had to suddenly focus on the subtitles to understand some things being said, and not helping things either was the terrible audio mixing done. Some scenes the speech was fine, others it is too quiet, so you have to turn up your speakers to hear it. And then suddenly as the episode ended, the ending song would play loud af and scare you out of your seat because you were just watching a quiet dialog scene. Why do this? They should fire the sound guy.

And to top it off, you have people who try to speak cantonese but you can immediately tell cantonese was not their main language so it comes out all wonky and weird. I found this really distracting. Get a speech coach or just use the language you are more comfortable with. For example, Cecilia Han is clearly a native speaker of mandarin, so when she attempted cantonese I just cringed so much. And there is this guy who speaks with a perfect English accent when having chats with Anna and her Australian one, and then switches back to cantonese immediately. I don’t understand these scenes because that man and Anna can speak canto, so why switch to english?

Simon Yam was great in his role of EU driver as he was the oldest member of the team but had great advice for everybody. He refused to be promoted because his wife had early onset alzheimer’s disease so he didn’t want the extra responsibility of work to stop him caring for his wife. I found that really touching and Simon really played his role very well. At the end, Simon makes the ultimate sacrifice by saving Jordan’s wife from the van with the C4, then driving into the harbor to prevent loss of life. As he got ready to do this he called Jordan to tell him to look after his wife with tears streaming down his eyes, and it was great… up until his van hit the barrier and everything became CG, including the explosion. The CG was terrible, like think Playstation 2 era game graphics.

Speaking of the bad CG, it feels like they ran out of money after spending most of it on the cast. The effects were just terrible no matter how you looked at them, and there is this constant feeling that certain things had to be cut to save money and this persists throughout the entire drama.

There was a part of the drama trying to discuss the prejudices that Hong Kongers have against South Asians, in this case Indians, and how they assume they are all crooks. I found myself not really caring about this subplot because it was so obviously forced into the drama as there was no racism up until that plot point, then suddenly everybody is prejudiced against South Asians. Once that part of the drama was over, there was no more racism against South Asians. Like what? I understand these are important topics but this was so clearly forced in. Just focus on the cops catching bad guys.

The drama’a ending was very unsatisfying. The cops manage to save the Hong Kong economy from collapsing but the white dude from the beginning still wanted to being down the Hong Kong stock exchange so ordered his minions to sell sell sell! The Hong Kong elite talk about using their assets to buy buy buy and keep the Hong Kong stock exchange from collapsing, and then one guy had a bright idea. This young man stood up, and without a hint of hesitation, said that maybe they could save the Hong Kong economy and stock exchange by depending on the Hong Kong public. His plan was to drop a hint to the public to buy specific stock, which they would guarantee would give a good return, so this would encourage the public to buy buy buy and thus save the Hong Kong economy from collapsing. All the elites realized they would not have to buy stocks at a loss agreed immediately because of course they would, and somehow the public really took the bait and bought those stock. I know this was meant to be portrayed as Hong Kongers coming together to save their own economy, but in reality it was rich people basically tricking the public into buying stock that have a high chance of losing value in the future so they wouldn’t have to swallow that loss themselves. Wtf?

It ends with the Hong Kong economy being saved and that white dude getting very upset. And that’s it. Nothing else. That white dude doesn’t get arrested or anything, we just cut to the cops getting on with their lives and then the drama ends. Ha?? What??

Just awful.

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Best cop drama of 2025 by far

When I first heard about this drama, I had no expectations since I did not want to go in with high hopes, only for them to be dashed because the drama sucked. Well, I can tell you guys now, this drama was great. For now, it is the best HK cop drama of 2025. There were so many high profile actors in this drama that I was worried it would suffer the same "too many protagonist" issue we have with other dramas *cough* Mission Run *cough*, but somehow it worked out.

The story follows three main characters: Bosco Wong as a Senior Inspector of HK Police, Kenneth Ma as a Senior Investigator of the ICAC, and Moses Chan as a DOJ Prosecutor. It covers how these 3 departments later work together - and later become friends - to deal with the big bad. They all have their own personal subplots to deal with, which provided great character building and depth to each of them. And these characters are interwoven so well that it naturally brings them together, which is just how things should be!

So who is the big bad? This drama wastes no time in letting you know who it is, and it is a bastard played by Dominic Lam. Man, I really missed watching this actor in action. Whenever he plays a good character, it is always really empty and shallow, which is quite strange to me, but whenever he plays the bad guy... man I just really hate the character because he plays the bad guy so well. Here, he is a really rich business man who does so many illegal behind-the-scenes deals to make himself extra rich., such as organ trafficking and selling firearms. This guys trusts nobody and so has no family or true friends, just people he finds useful until they are not, and when people are no longer useful he gets rid of them. A true villain and he really shines here. You know from episode 1 he is the big bad, and he evades capture while tormenting the main characters all the way until the last episode. I loved watching this guy as the bad guy.

The main character who suffers the most is Bosco. The 1st episode starts off with a bang as he is escorting a witness, played by Moon Lau, to court to get on the witness stand to testify against Dominic. On the way there, a bunch of mercenaries turn up and start shooting at the cops and killing everybody, just insane action at the beginning - bang bang bang! Bosco does his best but ends up getting knocked unconscious while his entire team was killed by the mercs and Moon Lau is kidnapped so could not make the stand. The only survivors were Bosco Wong and his colleague played by Raymond Cho. Everyone suspects a mole in the police, and all suspicion goes to Bosco because he led the team and survived the onslaught, but of course since he is the main character it's obviously not him.

Raymond Cho just so happened to be the uncle of Kenneth Ma, and so Kenneth doesn't believe his uncle would have been the mole and directs all his ICAC efforts against Bosco. There was a lot of animosity against Bosco until later we discover Raymond really was the mole, making things very awkward for Kenneth. Just when Raymond was going to testify to admit he was the mole because he was being blackmailed, he was once again threatened with his wife's safety, so on the stand he says Bosco was the person who made him do the things he did during episode 1. Nobody believed him as it was obvious he was lying, so Bosco was reinstated as a cop with all cops suspecting him of being bad.

And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, Bosco is kidnapped from his home - along with his wife - to an abandoned oil rig where they do illegal dark web live streams of underground Fight Club, with many people putting bets to see who would survive and who would die in these Battle Royale fights. Meanwhile, the women who are kidnapped get strung up in their nightgowns and whipped on livestream to perverts watching and paying to see more. Bosco only just got back with his wife - played by Jacky Cai - and his wife was pregnant with his child, so this made it extra difficult to watch. Dominic taunts Bosco repeatedly over this fact to make sure Bosco continues to fight in the arena. Man, they eventually escape but at the cost of his wife's life as she is shot by Dominic.

Then we have Moses Chan, a close friend of Kenneth Ma, and who is trying his best to put Dominic behind bars but is unable to because of lack of evidence and witnesses. His love interest played by Jessica Hsuan was an architect but ended up going to prison after her boss - played by Pat Poon - pushed his crimes onto Jessica after she noticed there were some strange numbers with the accounting and gave the details over to Kenneth to investigate. When Jessica ended up in prison, Kenneth felt so guilty for getting her in there that he didn't know how to face her and never visited her for those 8 years. Moses, though, never gave up and kept visiting her and doing his best to get her out. He has a daughter played by Regina Ho who ends up becoming a victim of an illegal organ trafficking ring and getting her kidneys harvested. Why? Believe it or not, it was to save Pat Poon as his kidneys were failing. Pat Poon was a business partner of Dominic, so Dominic was going to hook him up with a new kidney to save his life. They took one kidney but problems occurred that caused the transplant to fail, so they were going to take Regina's other kidney, but luckily the good guys managed to find her and save her.

When Jessica gets out of prison, her first step was to plan revenge against Pat and Dominic because she found out they worked together at the time she was framed and put in prison. She befriended a group of women while in prison, who all decide to help Jessica get revenge out of gratitude for her helping them while locked up. She managed to get a large sum of money from Pat Poon by threatening him at a restaurant, and then used that money to fund her operations to get revenge. With one of her allies, she managed to murder Pat Poon in hospital via lethal injection rather than let the police arrest him after they had enough evidence to nail him. That scene of her coldly telling Pat how she made all the arrangements to make sure Pat suffered kidney failure and then having the chance to go in and kill him was all planned by her. It was a great scene. Sadly, she doesn't go after Dominic because the main characters work out what she did and convinces her to not go down that route, so she turns herself in and ends up back in prison. If there was a character that needed more screen time it would be Jessicas. I wanted more!

We later find out there was another mole in the police department, and this mole was a high ranking one. The drama did great casting here and cast two people who could suspect because historically they have both played bad guy roles: Cheung Kwok Keung and Lawrence Ng. This made it difficult to guess who it was, especially since Lawrence Ng was Bosco's mentor in this drama so Bosco also didn't want to believe his mentor was a bad cop. We eventually discover it is actually Lawrence Ng that had been a secret partner of Dominic since the beginning, but instead of Lawrence just going ham and turning into an evil bastard like he does in his other face-turn roles, he maintains his demeanor and said he only wanted to be a good police officer and help the public, it was just that he kept getting held back by all the red tape. He finally turned witness against Dominic to point out every evil deed he had helped cover up for the bad guy as a way of atonement for his past crimes.

Eventually, the 3 mains get enough evidence and witnesses to nail Dominic and put him behind bars. There was a very clever plan to waste Dominic's time and delay the court date so they could get more evidence by arresting Dominic and detaining him for 48 hours at the police station, and then once he was released he was detained by the ICAC for another 48 hours. Finally, they had enough evidence so when Dominic went to leave the ICAC, he was re-arrested by the cops, and since it was the weekend and he missed the court date, he would have to wait over the weekend to the Monday before court can begin. This was a genius plan by Moses that had me thinking why don't we have more clever tactics like this in other dramas? As Dominic realized he was going to lose the court battle, he had a group of mercenaries storm the courtroom and kill the guards, taking control of the entire courtroom and Dominic basked in his bad guy monolog to everybody in that courtroom. This was great scene because he was so full of himself that when the good guys started fighting back, he just ran like coward, proving he was all talk. This led to a great chase scene that in turn led to a great car park scene, where Bosco and Dom played chicken in their cars, trying to ram into each other. It ends with Bosco getting the upperhand and was about to finish off Dom, but the bros - Moses and Kenneth - appear and stop him from doing it, saying it wasn't worth it and he would end up in prison instead. Bosco stands down, and just as his does, Dom drives his car towards Bosco and knocks him out. Dom ends up in prison anyway for his crimes and Bosco is in a coma, able to spend his coma time with his wife until she forced him to wake up and be a cop again to help people. I have never seen Bosco act so well like at this scene, it was very touching and tugged at the heart strings.

Despite the great scenes, this drama did have three things that annoyed me. The first of these was Him Law. That guy can act, that is for sure, but it feels like he keeps getting typecasted into these roles where he does really stupid and impulsive things that get him into trouble. He was a cop that served under Bosco and had learning difficulties so was unable to get promoted due to failing the written exam. He later takes an investigation too extreme and accidentally kills a gang member he was interrogating and tried to get rid of the evidence. Unfortunately for him, Lawrence Ng found CCTV footage and blackmailed him into assassinating Dominic and doing various things to undermine Police investigations. This led to Bosco suspecting him and eventually discovering that Him was a mole. This culminates into Him regretting all his actions and holding Lawrence Ng at gunpoint during his inauguration ceremony to being made Commissioner of HK Police and telling everybody he was the corrupt cop before un-aliving himself. When I saw Him Law I had a feeling things would turn out this way and prayed that it wouldn't, but it did, and that made me so disappointed because it was so predictable.

The second issue I had was with the theme song. It is a good rock song for sure, but the issue is that they use the song for both the intro and the ending theme, and they make you listen to the entire song in the ending, so after every episode you are forced to listen to the entire song. After 25 episodes, that song really got on my nerves.

The final issue was with the last scene when Bosco visits Dom in prison to talk to him - for some reason. This scene had the worst dubbing I have ever seen in any drama. I understand the need for dubbing if the audio in a place is terrible and it was likely that room had too much echo, requiring the dub, but the dubbing here was so bad it had me going wtf. The sound was not balanced properly, the lips did not sync up with what was being said, and they make it worse but doing close ups of each character's face so you can clearly see this. This was meant to be a cool scene where Bosco's last words to Dom would be the title of the drama "執法者們", but the terrible dubbing really took away from the scene's impact, kinda like going to a theme park but the rides there were all go karts. Why?

Overall, despite the issues I had with the drama, this was a great drama that I would watch again in the future! Worth a watch!

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Starts off really promising and then farts at the end

I watched this back when it was first on TVB but I didn't write anything about it as I was not on kisskh at the time. But recently a suggested YouTube video played the intro music to this drama and it brought back so many memories, so I thought why not talk about it.

This drama started off really well and it felt special, like a break from the typical TVB nonsense as it was full of cool CGI and style. The Chinese title of the drama was very simple. just one word and it was designed in a very clever way along with some really cool style choices. And there were cool scene transition b-roll where it is a close up of Kevin Cheng and it panned a little around him, just like on the title screen with Raiden in Metal Gear Revengeance. I was excited to find out more about what was going on with the drama as the story initially felt really compelling and the whole thing was dripping with style, but holy crap, it fell hard on its face as the drama continued.

So the show is about vampires. Yes, vampires. Nothing wrong with that as long as they do it properly. And at first it felt like it was all mystical and cool, but we eventually discover that everything - and I mean everything - is purely scientific. That destroyed all the mystical aspects of the drama and immediately made it crap. Imagine if Journey to the West had Sun Wukong doing magical stuff because he was a deity, and then halfway through we discovered he was actually an android. How many WTFs would you throw at the drama? For a more real-world example, do you remember the awesome movie Highlander? There can only be one! It was all magical and mystical and it never deviated from that fact in the storytelling. And then, Highlander 2 came out and it goes "oh you thought it was mystical? No! All science and different planet stuff." That p***ed off a lot of people, and this was what happened to this drama for me.

So, to explain my disappointment I'll explain the story how I remember it. In the future, humanity is all messed up and near extinction because of a vampire virus. Yes, a vampire virus, so it was taking a page right out of the Underworld IP. Two uninfected humans from the future - yes I said the future - played by Joel Chan and Kay Tse decided to take a sample of the virus and travel back in time to retrieve an extinct holy water that could cure the virus. How do they know this could cure the virus? Dunno, it was simply brought up without much explanation from a terribly voiced computer AI. While they were flying to the past in their time machine, they encountered problems that led to crashing, leaking of virus, Joel Chan and Kay Tse getting infected, and then the both of them emerging 500 years in ancient China where they went crazy and started biting everyone.

While these new vampires were going nuts and biting everybody and making new vampires, Kevin Cheng and his band of Imperial Guards from ancient China - yes Imperial Guards who were supposed to be guarding the Forbidden City but were now outside - were on a mission to defeat the vampires who were terrorising the town. They obviously lose because they were only human, but then suddenly all the guards - including Eddie Kwan - get struck by lightning and become immortals with superpowers. Yes, immortal just like immortals in Highlander so they can only die by being beheaded. Now we have human immortals and vampire immortals, both with super powers running around unchecked. The immortals continue their mission to hunt down vampires to the modern day with the belief that they would become human again when all vampires are destroyed.

Since this was a TVB production, you bet your ass that the characters all decide to set up base in Hong Kong because you know... Hong Kong is a great place to be when you are immortal and stuff. I didn't really mind this too much. There were some great effects and fight scenes, some great - if predictable - conflicting drama when Eddie Kwan, as an immortal, decided to make his son into a vampire so that he wouldn't die, but it is all overshadowed by the darn annoying reveal that vampirism was a virus and there was time travel involved. They didn't just jump the shark, they skipped over the blue whale as well.

Besides my main complaint, there were other issues. The main cast loved going to Amsterdam for some reason, and the story makes everything - and I mean everything - happen in Amsterdam. Where was that super magic holy cure water? Yes, it is in Amsterdam. This was purely because TVB had a tight budget so they had to choose one country and then write the entire story based in that country to save money. This meant that vampires also came from there, which made me laugh because weren't vampires historically from Transylvania, Romania? Not here, everything is in Amsterdam, yo. Every time there was a scene where they had to return to Amsterdam I shook my head like why Amsterdam? I bet they only went there for the redlight district and to smoke weed at the cafes while they tried to write themselves out of the plotholes.

Speaking of plotholes, the biggest one was how the immortals came to be after getting struck by lightning. I thought maybe some higher being gifted them that power to fight the vampires, but the drama never gives us a true explanation. We are given a half-assed explanation that some things cannot be explained by science. Wtf, the drama used science to explain vampirism but the immortals we have nothing?

The vampire acting in this drama was also so over-the-top it was hilariously bad. When Joel Chan and Kay Tse use their vampire modes they get this really stupid growling voice and they do the old-school Hong Kong movie ghost claw hand pose that kept making me laugh when I saw it. It was so bad, man, you have no idea. Joel Chan being the big bad was not a problem for me because he had the acting chops to pull it off, but damn the effects and poses they decided to use here were so bad that it removed everything intimidating about the vampire forms. Even the vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer are scarier, and that's not saying much.

And man, I found Grace Chan so annoying as well. She spends the entire drama just hopelessly in love with Kevin but Kevin turns her down because he is an immortal. When she discovered this, she chose to become a vampire so that he didn't have to worry about her dying, completely ignoring the fact he wasn't into her to begin with. The best part about this is that in real-life she succeeds in getting with Kevin and they got married and had kids, so she sorta succeeded I guess?

Finally we have Kay Tse as the female lead and boy she sucked. She has no, and I mean NO charisma at all. I had more fun watching Anjaylia Chan being an awesome martial artist learning under Kevin but hiding her skills, but later she becomes a vampire. Kay Tse's acting is so wooden and I really did not like watching her, and she has no chemistry with Kevin at all. I have seen more chemistry between Kevin and Chun Wong (the fat guy in the drama) than between her and Kevin.

On the bright side, it does have a great intro song.

Ultimately, a real letdown of a drama. Kevin Cheng did have a topless scene showing off how buff he was despite his age of 47 at the time, but that doesn't make up for all the awfulness of this drama. This was just disappointing and it was made worse by having a great start and then doing a stupid science twist later that just ruined the entire mystical mood it started off with.

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Boring. How is a Moses Chan drama boring?

I won’t write too much as many have already spoken about this but I can tell you now this drama was so boring. Predictable and boring. And when it tries to get interesting, it made no sense like what? My goodness, I like Shaun Tam and the tone of his voice can be ASMR soothing but he was just annoying af here. Moses is also portrayed as some sort of single minded businessman with a lot of ambition, but was too forgiving for his own good. He also got annoying to watch. Best actor was Katy Kung, but that’s not saying much I mean she was surrounded by mediocrity.

But the biggest sin of the drama? They took a classic musical piece Vivaldi’a Four Seasons: Winter - particularly the Allegro non molto movement - and put lyrics in it! Why? Why do that? The lyrics were terrible and I swear the timing was a little off as well! They could have left the lyrics out and it would have been fine but no, now all I hear when I listen to Winter is 續… 好… 戲! Damn it TVB! You ruined a classic!

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Great drama, terrible main theme song

I love this drama, always puts a smile on my face.
It’s a shame Linda Chung cannot sing.
It has a fantastic cast and great story that is just fun and gripping from beginning to end.
But Linda Chung really cannot sing.
Bobby Au Yeung is fantastic to watch and Joey Meng is darn beautiful in her role, it just blows my mind.
And yet Linda Chung just really cannot sing at all.
Overall a great drama to watch and great to rewatch, just remember to skip the intro and ending credits because the singing is terrible.
Did I mention Linda Chung cannot sing?
Seriously, who thought she could sing and allowed her to sing so many songs at TVB? She has this low hoarse voice that makes songs sound like they are being wrung out of her throat instead of being sung, and yet somebody at TVB thought “yes, she can sing, make her sing!”
Other than that small black mark, great show! Just stop Linda singing, for the love of God.

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