TV home from home (III)

This post is all about the HK drama I’ve just finished - ‘Inspector Gourmet’ (2016) (為食神探). Or as it should have been called in English - ‘What a Carry On’, ‘Carry On Cooking’, or ‘The Quick and the Deadpan.’

Plot: Chu Sau-Nah (nicknamed ‘Big Sister Nah’) is in charge of a detective agency which still bears her husband’s name - but they’ve been separated for 2 years and the date for signing actual divorce papers is fast approaching. To complicate matters, her estranged husband has set up a rival detective agency with a new name right across the corridor to her. Galling, but what can you do? Her younger brother, Yeung Dak-Hei (nicknamed ‘Bill Gei’ as a piss-take on ‘Bill Gates’) is a chef in a restaurant, but constantly solves tiny mysteries like his idol Inspector Pineapple Bun (a comic people, a comic) and frequently daydreams - and has no filter on his mouth. When he gets framed for snapping his boss with his mistress, he gets fired. To make ends meet he ends up working for his sister Nah and her detective agency. Business is not exactly booming, so after another ex-copper of a detective crashes one of their investigations, Nah forces Bill Gei to get the bloke on their team. This bloke, Mak Sai, is also a self-taught gourmet of any and all food and frequently stops everything to eat. Add to the mix a woman who’s a village mob boss, Ah Kiu (a play on the English word and triad ability to ‘kill’ those in their way), who can out-drive, out-fight and out-surveil anyone. Finally we add a woman who joins the agency as a young up-and-comer, Ga-Ga. Unfortunately for anyone without a sense of humour, Bill Gei suffers love at first sight and the consequent gags, near-misses and dating shenanigans keep the background plots going as the agency takes on all kinds of cases. There are so many subplots and complicated situations it’s impossible to go into them all here, but suffice to say, they’re all gripping and all work toward the final showdown. Food is also a massive theme the whole time - but as it's mostly HK food, what’s not to like?

Tone: this is first and foremost a comedy, a pastiche of detective shows in parts, a feel-good drama, a mystery, and a show about family, no matter how they came to be. As such it’s high on laughs and scenes that border on slapstick, as well as something Stephen Chow termed ‘mou lei tau’ a while ago. This basically translates as ‘came out of nowhere’ or ‘no real meaning’. Decidedly low-brow and depending heavily on puns in Cantonese as a result of cultural or societal standards, they can be hard to crack for foreigners and hard to subtitle. However, this series takes a pretty good stab at it and when they get it right, it’s priceless - and downright hilarious.

So characters, then. First of all, women. Let’s talk about the women. Nah is portrayed as a penny-pinching miser who charges high rent to her younger brother Bill Gei to let him move into the company flat, who doesn’t let anyone claim expenses for stake-outs from the company, and generally seems a right battle-axe. What the others don’t know is that she’s struggling to keep the company afloat and bring in new clients - but she can’t tell anyone because she can’t be seen to fail. Sound familiar? Sister Kiu (‘Kill’), the mob boss, only actually got into it to protect her mother and younger brother from typical street triads, and keep the family out of poverty whilst her dad was out gambling and drinking away all the profits from the family shop. It’s a shock later on to find she’s in her mid-twenties but has accomplished so much. Other gangs fear her, she’s competent at everything she does, and she has the ability to change when she realises her assumptions have been wrong. Most importantly, the gags at her expense are mostly remarks about her being ‘a tomboy’, ‘butch’, and ‘not girl-shaped’. This is because she’s confident and doesn't give a shit what people think about her - and the social commentary here is turned on its head a few times.

Ga-Ga, the new person and target of Bill Gei’s complete and utter worship, begins the series as a young, naiive woman who has a gap in her past and memory, who is easily swayed and can find herself intimidated. As she helps with cases and see Sister Kiu tackle anything with absolute confidence and a lack of shits to give, she gradually begins to assert more of a personality. A massive break comes halfway through and from this she turns into a self-motivated, decisive and capable character. Although a lot of the show is played for laughs, the basis for their actions and situations is set up well and always comes out of reasoning and tempered emotions. They are not air-headed, simple people without back story or reasons for behaving the way they do. It only takes a few hours of prep for writers to set characters up properly but few shows bother; this one gave them complicated motivations that drove them to be who they were and gave them so much to work with.

The men - ah yes, the men. We have an even split of good guys and bad guys here (as we do with the female characters). Mak Sai, commonly referred to as ‘Mexico’ (Mak Sai Goh - ‘goh’ being brother in Cantonese, but Hak-sai-goh being Cantonese for Mexico), has a complicated and tragic past that takes half a series to uncover. It’s nothing half the audience hasn’t realised, but he does come with a few shocking secrets of his own and when the show does finally confirm fan theories, it’s done in a way that makes you wish it weren’t true. Louis Yuen is a very good acting choice for this character - wily but always hungry, smart and efficient, with an ability to plan ahead that would make Hannibal Smith jealous. He’s quick with the banter and bang-on with his come-backs, providing a lot of the ‘mou lei tau’ humour by being so quick and so deadpan.

Casting Kenneth Ma as the equally wily yet easily distracted, flippant Bill Gei was also a good move by TVB. He’s proficient at Puppy Eyes, the Evil Jaw-Jut of Anger, and will literally do any role you throw at him. The fawning figure of Bill Gei in love is ofttimes hilarious and cringe-worthy all at once. Throw in the fact that he’s nearly 6 feet tall and has to keep stooping to fit in the frame with shorter co-stars and you have some built-in gags to tease and infuriate the audience in a good way. He’s often the foil for Mak Sai’s witty lines, turning what should be a one-liner into a volley of wit and clever puns that often made me laugh out loud (a few times I actually had to step it back and watch it again). The secret I think is that these two actors have rehearsed the shit out of this and they put their backs into it - the acting was awesome all-round, but these two did very well with the sharp wit and reactions.

Highlights of this ‘mou lei tau’ include Mak Sai protesting that Nah wants him to take a case for no money - by shouting ‘YOU ARE NOT A HORSE’ in English at her. Leave it barely a split-second, in which everyone concerned (not least of the all the audience) wonder wtf he’s talking about horses for, and then in steps Bill Gei with ‘mh hai a ma?’ (唔係呀嗎?) This is Cantonese for ‘wtf / you’ve got to be joking / no way’ etc., but it rhymes with the Cantonese for, you’ve guessed it, ‘not a horse’. That’s the level of humour we have here. I nearly spit my tea out when the gag dropped and I’m not ashamed to say I’ve used it since at work when I can't swear out loud.

Pair lines like “what are you talking about?” with the come-back “for Cantonese, please press 1”, and the running gag (that Bill Gei starts but then spreads to other characters) of using shocking Chinglish but prefacing it with a supposedly smart, learned comment: “1 word: hou-jyu!” (HKers frequently adopt English words, and anyone who has watched a police drama or film will have heard someone shout ‘hou-jyu!’ at some point. This is the borrowed word ‘hold’ - meant as in ‘stop’ - but with the Cantonese particle on the end, hence ‘hold’ = ‘hou-jyu’.) This phrase gets played more and more for laughs, like “3 words: perfect!” etc. The trick is to deliver it with such a straight face that I swear Kenneth Ma needs a TV award for Best Actor. He did win a 2012 Best Character Award for ‘The Hippocratic Crush’, but that’s hardly enough. He was one of TVB’s favourite character actors for years, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that he started getting main and then leading roles in dramas. This is meta’d during the scene when he’s professing his undying love for Ga-Ga, and she says ‘Wow - you looked so sincere just then. Almost as good as Kenneth Ma’, to which he replies ‘He’s just an extra - I’m one of the leads in this drama, thank you’.

Another highlight for me personally was the occasional patterns of words that would lend themselves very well to being indie band names. We had things like ‘green tea lava waffle’, ‘pak choi fiasco’, ‘scumbag militia’, and ‘sleazy boss with a side of vegetables’.

There were serious issues here, such as women drugged and then possibly molested, murder, adultery - all the usual fun. But all the issues were treated with respect. They may have made fun of the situation, but never at the expense of a victim and never to trivialise the gravity of the issue or the potential damage done. It even reminds the audience at times to cherish their own loved ones, that you shouldn’t copy TV shows simply because they look cool, that movies lie (my personal favourite), and that when the shit hits the fan, ask yourself if you actually saw it happen - i.e. not to fly off the handle until the facts are in. Bundle this up in Carry On style bawdy jokes or stunningly witty wordplay and you have a series that I will probably end up watching again at some point.

Verdict? 9/10 - would definitely recommend. The tone may not be for everyone, and your mileage will certainly vary where the humour is concerned, but for me this was a spot-on laugh riot that really cheered me up after the emotional investment and devastation in the wake of ‘The Hippocratic Crush’.

So peach and lube, everyone. Go watch some fun telly and be good to yourself.

TV home from home (II)

Back with more telly. You may have noticed that I haven’t updated the tag about movies for a bit; that’s because everything at the cineplex near us has been bumped in favour of some space battle thing. I will go see it, but it can wait. (If it’d been a new Star Trek film I would have seen it at the 00:05 showing, then again the following night. But it’s not.) That’s a rant for another day; we don’t live in The Big City (A.K.A. London village) so we don’t get more than a few blockbusters at our cinemas. If we’re lucky we get a foreign-language film from time to time, but that has to be a festival winner. And even then it’s shown DURING THE DAY WHEN EVERYONE IS WORKING SO WE CAN’T WATCH IT ANYWAY.

I digress.

So the most recent foreign drama I’ve watched is My Dearly Sinful Mind, A.K.A. 心理追兇Mind Hunter. Featuring the usual TVB regulars Kenneth Ma (馬國明), Vivien Yeo (楊秀惠), Michelle Yim (嚴惠玲), and Willie Wai (韋家雄), it also brings a few new faces to light for me. Grace Wong (王君馨) was a powerhouse the whole way through, and Matt Yeung (揚明)’s portrayal of the young ‘orphan’ with Asperger’s was excellent.

In a nutshell: Dr Icy Leung is a clinical psychologist; a recent case of a bloke with learning difficulties killing 4 high-school girls in a school changing room has just ended in the bloke being sentenced to life in prison. However, Dr Leung is convinced his mental state was affected by something and he’s not actually to blame. Dr Leung’s boyfriend - who happens to be Dr Chung, her fellow clinical psychologist - doesn’t agree with her and one night they have a fight about it. She gets out of his car and storms off - straight into the path of an oncoming car. She dies, he guilt-trips himself about it for 4 years afterwards, the world moves on. Until that is the one survivor from the killing spree, Wong Hoi-Ching, returns to HK from seemingly nowhere. Dr Chung, determined to prove his deceased girlfriend was right in her professional assessment, begins to dig into what happened that day, starting with the prisoner who apparently killed the 4 girls.

This looked like a simple ‘oh my poor dead girlfriend; I must avenger her death’ affair when I started it, but it quickly turned into a philosophical dilemma; if you’re up against a complete sociopath, do the ends justify the means in stopping them? How far do you go, no matter the consequences, to prevent them from killing more people just to get what they want?

The complicated web of friends, acquaintances, characters they pick up on the way and how the consequences stay with them - it’s all grist for the mill. You think you know someone, and then they rock up in episode 15 with a shocking secret. It doesn’t look like it has an impact on the overall plot, but just wait for it. Then we have characters and their two faces - everyone does, this is true. But when it means they stray very far indeed from what people see on the surface, it makes for some good telly in terms of furthering the question posed above: can you pretend to be a sociopath to catch a sociopath? And if someone gets hurt because of it but it helps you catch the killer, does that make it ok?

Long, winding, full of red herrings and moments of OH COME ON YOU HAVE TO SCREW THIS BLOKE OVER OR I’LL SCREAM, it also makes you appreciate a slow, steady crafting of getting everyone to their inevitable conclusion - only to have it turned on its head by a character who decides that Enough Is Enough and the Big Bad has to stopped by any means necessary. I did enjoy the final episodes, and I have to say, enjoyed very much the taking-down of a few characters. However, as with most TVB dramas, it left it on a such a note that I’m worried that, if another season ever happens, then the writers will have to literally fish pretty hard to get themselves out of where it was left. But I’m completely ok with that.

Overall verdict: 9/10. Rewatchability? Hmm. Now I know how it ends and all the secrets, probably not very likely to watch the entire thing again (28 episodes). However, the last 3 or 4? Definitely.

And that’s it for now. Wondering what to watch next, but I think I have an idea.

Soopy twist.

TV home from home (I)

It may not surprise you to learn, based on my penchant for a particular kind of foreign film, that I also watch foreign TV. Now I know I moved back to Blighty a while ago (4 years, 26 days ago - but who’s counting?) but Hong Kong will always be a part of me and it’s hard to let go of the amusement you got used to having around for 11 years.

For this reason, I still watch the odd HK drama. The local Hong Kong channel TVB does me quite nicely, seeing as it’s like the Beeb but on a much smaller budget but has a larger pool of actors to pick from. The normal routine is that TVB produce a drama to be shown five nights a week. This runs for 21 or 30 episodes, or if it’s particularly dramatic or written to be a flagship show, then it’s 50 episodes. That’s it - end of story. But if it the ratings were really good or public reception was impressive, then a while later (like 6 - 12 months later) they’ll produce another series and call it ‘2’. And so it goes.

Not all HK dramas are gold - you can’t churn out constant hits. However, the better ones stick with you.

I’m currently watching The Exorcist’s Meter (降魔的). The usual faces have been cast, not least of all the stellar Kenneth Ma (馬國明) as the central character, Siu Ma. He’s a taxi driver with an unusually blessed, if hand-to-mouth, life. When he accidentally pees on the wrong statue (it’s a long story), he releases a genie who’s determined to pay him back by giving him his most important wish. However, this leads to all kinds of ghostly and demonic shenanigans - Hong Kong style. You have the long-suffering mother (except whose mother is she?), the long-dead brother, the neighbour who’s as superstitious as the Ghost Facers and a kindly uncle who’s based his entire life on scientific fact and doesn’t believe in Fung Sui nonsense, never mind ghosts and demons. Add in a TV personality who only got into her tenure on the local equivalent of Most Haunted whilst trying to be a real reporter, a huge question mark over his real parents and of course the demon-hunting genie, and you have some compelling TV. You won't get a more ‘local’ kind of story on HK TV, and I’m really enjoying the mood whiplash between Siu Ma taking the piss out of his cumbersome genie millstone one minute and then him inadvertently picking up ghostly passengers the next. Typical family arguments, hardships that normal people go through just trying to survive - it’s all there and it makes me miss HK at times. But then it also makes me giggle a bit.

Knowing the nation as I (used to) do, it’s easy for me to slip into this TV world and understand the context. It may be challenging for newbies to get their head around (especially if the only travelling they’ve done it between TV channels), but I’d highly recommend this as a bit of fluff that may well stay with you for a bit afterwards. I’m only up to episode 13 but having it on a service where I can binge watch it definitely helps!

That’s it for now. I’m sure I’ll be back soon with more waffle of the entertainment kind.

Soopytwist.