Top of the Crop
Never Dance Alone - A series that was unexpectedly enjoyable and heart-warming. Featured some of the best acting of the year by the 7 leading ladies and their young versions. [Review]
Storm in a Cocoon - The best thriller of the year with a well-crafted mystery that kept audiences at the edge of their seats, followed by a classic family-business struggle. [Review]
Exciting Thrillers
Black Heart White Soul - A compact, griping thriller with an unravelling mystery and chilling characters. A fine performance by Roger Kwok that is 100% deserving of the TV King title. [Review]
Line Walker - A suspenseful series that will keep you chasing after it, despite the presence of Sharon Chan and the non-stop looping of sub-theme song. [Review]
Ruse of Engagement - An engaging series that also had an excellent mystery, even if it makes some giant leaps (literally) in logic.
Entertaining Ancient Comedies
Gilded Chopsticks - A good mix of comedy and palace drama. Wong Cho Lam shows off his real talent when he's not dressed as a girl or trying to speak with an accent.
Ghost Dragon of Cold Mountain - Fun characters with a bunch of decent cases. [Review]
Disappointments
Tomorrow is Another Day - A series that promised an unprecedented look behind the mysterious prison walls, but in the end focused on the wrong things.
Overachievers - The business battle that never happened. [Review]
The Ultimate Addiction - The only addiction in here is TVB's addiction to love triangles and dumb revenge plots. [Review]
Tiger Cubs II - It's almost a chore to watch the incompetent SDU squad plus a crazy bulging eye madam running around like idiots every week.
Decent Fillers
Outbound Love - A nice little series filmed in Malaysia with a playful Ruco Chan. Enjoyable while it lasted.
Return of the Silver Tongue - Don't even remember anything about it except that it was about ancient lawyers.
Rear Mirror - A mellow series about a bus driver and a CEO *yawn* [Thoughts]
All That is Bitter is Sweet - The series doesn't move along until at least half-way through, but Natalie Tong was a highlight to watch.
Waste of Time
Queen Divas - When even 15 episodes is too much...
Swipe Tap Love - An aimless plot with a miserable mood.
Come On, Cousin - A random mash-up of lame comedy. Quite possibly the worse anniversary series ever.
ICAC Investigators 2014 - No effort whatsoever was put into the story-telling of the cases.
Shades of Life - The attempt to examine the social issues of Hong Kong was superficial and sometimes propaganda-like.
Skimmed/Skipped
Coffee Cat Mama - Caught parts of it, mostly of Vincent Wong and Nancy Wu's storyline.
Lady Sour - The cheesy-sounding plot was all I needed to stay away from this series.
I like the way you named the different categories, very fitting :)
ReplyDeleteCompletely agree with your Top of the Crop picks. I really enjoyed both of them a lot! so unfortunate neither one won any awards....my biggest disappointment of the year towards TVB.
Funny how you watched most of the series this year while this is probably the first year i skipped so many dramas, so many were boring/disappointing
Yes, definitely the biggest disappointment that neither series were recognized with awards. Those two (and some of the earlier series) actually made me have hope in TVB, but their series in the second half were mostly disappointing.
DeleteNo wayyy, I loved Swipe Tap Love!
ReplyDeleteHaha, I saw that in your year-end review. I guess it's not the type of drama that I like, plus not fans of the two leads either.
DeleteI'm with you on Never Dance Alone. Such a good drama, only to be under promoted by TVB. And as for Swipe Tap Love and Queen Divas... I'll have to agree with you on those as well. Completely plotless, especially Swipe Tap Love. It had me going like -_-
ReplyDeleteYay, another fan for Never Dance Alone! That one was really an unexpected joy for me this year.
DeleteLike your post miriamfanz, especially the way you divided them up. :) Haven't been following other TVB blogs for a while and now that I am again, it's sad to see most of them have been abandoned. With that said, I'm glad to see you're still around and love your posts and different features!
ReplyDeleteThanks :) Glad to see you're back. I really like your posts too and hope to see more of them soon!
DeleteNice recap, miriamfanz! Agree with you for the most part – and salute you too for actually sitting through majority of the series! For me, almost all of the series would go under the “skimmed” section because I couldn’t bear to sit through most of them through to completion. The only series this year that I watched from beginning to end (every episode) and actually paid close attention (meaning that I wasn’t doing my usual multi-tasking while I watched and I actually was interested enough to spend time reading the episode summaries) was Storm in a Cocoon. Everything else – well, let’s just say the episodes I did watch, even without paying much attention, were a waste of time in my opinion….
ReplyDelete[On a side note, I will say that HKTV’s 3 series that they’ve aired since launching pretty much blow all of TVB’s series this year out of the water – even my mom (who is TVB’s typical “see-lai” audience and one of the few people I know who actually watches every single one of TVB’s series, good or bad) has become an HKTV fan….the first thing she asks me every day when I get home from work is whether HKTV uploaded the latest episode of their series to their website yet…LOL. She still watches TVB too, but it has become more of a “hobby” than anything else].
I kinda regret sitting through some of them - those in the Waste of Time category - but the bad thing about me is I have to finish what I started. Probably should change that habit... I wanted to do a Year in Review on my HKTV blog, but there's only like 3 series, so hopefully next year I can do one.
DeleteNice recap you have there! Agree with you on most of it. The only series last year I didn't watch are Swipe Tap Love, Lady Sour and Return of the Silver Tongue because I am not that fond of comedy and also because Priscilla is there whom I don't really think she can act well at least not as a leading actress.
ReplyDeleteI personally love Outbound Love, Tomorrow is Another Day, Black Heart White Soul, Never Dance Alone and Storm in a Cocoon.
Don't worry, you aren't missing a thing from the series that you've skipped. I share your feelings on Priscilla. Her acting is not enough to carry a series as a female lead.
DeleteNice recap there. Totally agree on 'The Ultimate Addiction'. What a waste of my time. Please keep up the good work!
ReplyDelete