Good Against Evil

CAST:
Deric Wan as Hwa Hak/Lau Gao Long
Yoyo Mung
Chian Ka Lok

THE STORY:

Deric Wan stars as a kind-hearted thief (Lau Gao Long) who is constantly plagued by his conscience every time he has a mission. He doesn't really want to steal but he has to in order to provide for his sister, Mary. On a chance encounter, he assumes the identity of a detective (Hwa Hak), who is totally opposite in character, but bears a striking resemblance with. Problems arise as he tries to fix up the bad image Hwa Hak has with the public, his family and friends.

THE REVIEW:

Though it is only 20 episodes, the narration is well paced, allowing the audience to move along with the plot of the story. The story line is complex, and you'll get a feeling that this looks set to be a mega production, but it turns out otherwise. No... not that I'm disappointed, rather, I am very impressed that the script writers are able to pull off a complicated story with multi-layered themes like love, relationship, moral issues etc within the limit of 20 episodes. The end product is a well paced, action-packed drama with very good narrative structure. In addition, it is well explained, tying all the loose ends. Throughout the whole drama, the writers have brought us step by step closer to the ending, thus for once, the ending doesn't come off as being rushed.

Though this is a small scale production compared to Golden Faith (same year), which has a star studded cast list, and obviously bigger budget, it still shines because of its excellent script and well-cast actors gave very good performances.

A job well done, producers!! For a small scale production, it shines in all areas. This shows good leadership on the producers' part and directors as well. The coordination between the different aspects of production like camera, editing and post sound is obvious, as shown by the consistency throughout the drama. This I view as a breakthrough because TVB dramas have a tendency to have abrupt endings to the background music with each scene change, giving an abrupt feel to the transition between scenes. Though it still happens in this production, it is not as obvious as the rest and much effort has been put in to try to amend this. Thus when I watched this drama, it is refreshing as it stands out in terms of production value - much better than the other small scale productions.

Among all the technical aspects of this production, I am most impressed with the script and second, the editing.

Writing - It is well structured in terms of the storyline though it relies a lot on 'coincediences' as a tool to push the story forward, but it is forgivable considering that it only has 20 episodes to tell the story. It also has too many clich's, but the script writers pull it off brilliantly by allowing the character to explain the reason behind the clich'd scene (the one which centres on Chian Ka Lok's love interest).

Excellent dialogue is employed here. Certain lines in this drama are both witty and funny - watch out for the scenes with Chian Ka Lok and Deric Wan. Their dialogue is riddled with subtle gay hints/analogies which add to the humour. Plus great acting from these two actors made it enormously fun watching scenes with them together.

Ingenious tools of visual communication is also used, making full use of time, creating a sense of action which keeps the viewers glued to the box. No words can describe the enormous admiration for the level of skill employed in this script. It is fantastic. You've got to watch this!!

Editing - I am surprised at the high level of edits used for this production. The flashbacks and the transitions between the scenes are well edited, giving the whole serial a seemingly higher production value. Usually in most TVB productions, some editing comes off as choppy, or disruptive. 'Good Against Evil' is so different!! Every transition is smooth, well hidden in fact. I am really impressed with the way the images are cut together here.