San Man Neoi Wong (2023)

A great drama, best one in 2023 in my opinion

When I heard Charmaine Sheh was returning to TVB for this one drama I was excited because she was one of my favorite actors to watch on TVB in the past. And here for this drama she does not disappoint. She is a strong independent woman who is called the Queen of News and you can tell from all her interactions and actions that she clearly is the Queen, and had worked hard to get to that position. The other members of the cast really compliment her well as we have great acting such as from Kenneth Ma as her rival at the SNK news station really driving up the tension between the two.

This drama really had the feel of the period drama piece Beyond the Realm of Conscience and its sequel also by TVB, but put into a modern setting. There is a lot of shadowy underhanded work and backstabbing with people constantly switching sides so it just had you second guessing everything that was going on. We have Samantha Ko who started out working for Kenneth and using her sex appeal to draw in the viewers, but she switches sides to Charmaine the moment she felt Kenneth was losing, and we have Regina Ho who was being trained to take over from Charmaine by Charmaine herself, but it turned out she was actually undercover for Kenneth and was secretly dating him. And you have the Director of the station played by Eric Tang who appears to foster calm and friendly competition but was secretly plotting against Charmaine with Kenneth, yet he can’t do much as Charmaine has the support of his boss, Mrs Fong played by Mimi Kung. Their relationships are confusingly intertwined, so you really do not know what is going to happen at any moment. The reveals just kept having me going “whoa what?”

The person with the most interesting character arc was played by Selena Lee. She started out as the neutral party and was vehemently against siding with Charmaine or Kenneth, instead focusing on delivering the truth to viewers. But as the drama went on, she found her beliefs tested and ended up in a real dark place. She came out of it with a massive heel turn, switching from righteous reporter to selfish Selena. As we watch her progress, we understand her thinking and sympathise with her decisions.

The only actor I found annoying was Regina Ho. Man, she is portrayed as this really easily manipulated idiot who is ashamed of her humble beginnings and cannot even handle her younger sister being this brat that needed to be disciplined. Later she started to hallucinate as she started to have a mental breakdown. She was annoying enough already, but she had to commit the biggest sin in the drama by cheating on Kenneth Ma with her uber driver. Like wtf?

The final episodes were not as tense and dramatic as the earlier ones, but it does end with Charmaine’s past catching up with her and a hostage situation to resolve, but I am hopeful for the future because Bosco Wong made a cameo appearance at the end as a possible new rival for Charmaine. That had me very excited, season 2 hurry up and come!

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