Unchained Medley (2023)

At least make the characters sing!

Do you want to see how TVB can waste a talented guy like Owen Cheung? If so, watch this drama. Here Owen plays a music composer and has fallen into some rough times because of being accused of plagiarism. He decides to move to a small village to get away from all the drama, and that is when he meets a Chinese opera loving female ghost played by Katy Kung.

There is only one interesting plot point with a bastard plagiarising Owen and making it appear as if it was the other way around, but they sort out this issue too early in the drama. The rest of it is all boring opera stuff that had me yawning the entire time. I don’t mind Chinese opera, but the issue is that this drama managed to make it so uninteresting. The worst part is that all the female singers are clearly dubbed, especially Katy Kung as the dub is very obvious as the lips do not match the singing. If TVB actors can learn gun fighting and choreography and so on, they can learn to sing Chinese opera music. And if mot just cast a person who can, why Katy Kung? Why Tiffany Lau?

The entire show was very predictable as well. Owen Cheung just happened to look EXACTLY like the boyfriend of the Katy Kung ghost, and yet it never crosses their mind maybe he is the reincarnation of the boyfriend despite Owen having dreams of his past life. Instead they spend the rest of it looking for the boyfriend as if he was alive. Then later - gasp - it turns out he is the reincarnation and that in his past life he was murdered! Whoa I did not see that coming (!). Later when the main big bad appears, it is right near the end of the drama so we don’t get time to get to know the guy, it is just boom - there he is - then boom - bad stuff. And - coincidentally - the big bad happened to know ghost catching magic as well. Like how much plot convenience crap can you cram into one drama?

And the funniest part? Katy Kung is a ghost and we all know this, but for reasons only known to the writers, she is the only ghost in the entire drama. She doesn’t meet other ghosts and we never see any other ghosts besides her. If she is a ghost then logically there would be others, and with a huge place like Hong Kong you can’t tell me that there would be no wandering ghosts hanging around. Come on!

As a result, I think this sucks due to the really poor and lazy writing.

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