Character map of Highs and Lows 雷霆掃毒 (English)

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天梯 The Last Steep Ascent: English Character Map

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I haven't watched the finale of King Maker yet, but I will be writing a review when I do!
*Edit: I have done so now, read it here.

巴不得媽媽 Divas in Distress initial thoughts and Character chart (in English)

I think that Divas in Distress is a rather daring series. It doesn't have any of the top fadans or siu sangs. The only 'in' casts are Mandy Wong and Him Law, who funnily enough are paired together in this series.

To be honest, it's one of those series I'm not interested in. I'm not really that interested in the plot of this series, and probably wouldn't watch it if I were at school or university. But as it's holiday time for me, I'll watch anything TVB puts on!

I think it's quite nice though, having two veteran actors Liza Wang and Gigi Wong as the main characters then some new-comers. Don't forget Chin Kar Lok, who debuted in the acting industry at 1985 who is the male lead here for his third series. I thought he was excellent in A Bride for a Ride which was a massive comedy, so I wonder how he will be in a slightly more serious role!

I've only watched the first episode of Divas in Distress so far. I'm not really drawn into the series yet. The start of the episode bored me at the start but got a bit more interesting towards the end when they start to draw the characters together and show that Liza and Gigi have some ongoing feud. 

Newcomer Eliza Sam had the most screen time for the actresses in this episode. I was looking forwards to her performance. It's a new face, and even though this character might be a bit too main for her since she's only started acting, I hope she starts well, or she's going to flop, like Matthew Ko who hasn't had a dominant role since "Man in Charge" with Kenneth Ma.

I'm neutral towards her performance so far. I didn't notice her accent much in Ghetto Justice 2, but as soon as she opened her mouth in Divas in Distress I heard it. I think it's quite light, but just in a way that makes her quite hard to understand. I think it's better than Christine Kuo's, but not as good as JJ Jia's. As there's 22 episodes of "Divas in Distress", I hope that I will get used to it! 

Acting wise I could see that she's giving it all her throwing herself into it which is quite nice. Because of this though I think she's exaggerating sometimes with her facial expressions and movements. For her first major role though, I'd say she's doing quite well so far. Let's see how she performs through the whole series.

Haven't seen much of Liza or Gigi yet. Liza always tends to play the rich lady with a good posture but bad temper, and it looks like it's going to be the same again. I don't remember seeing Gigi in any major roles before so I look forwards to seeing her on screen too!

Here are the character maps for Divas in Distress, the original one and one that I translated to English. The relationships seem much more simple than the ones in King Maker!

Original picture from http://programme.tvb.com/drama/divasindistress/castmap/

造王者 King Maker initial thoughts and Character chart (in English)

So King Maker has just started airing and I've only watched the first 2 episodes. So far so good. Only thing with these serious ancient series is that sometimes I don't know what the characters are talking about :)
I'm going to refer to the character as their actor/ actresses names, as if you're anything like me, I haven't watched enough episodes to remember their names, so it should be easier to read.


First note: It seems like Wayne's character is more clever than Raymond's Zhu Ge Liang!



So I was having a look at the character map on the TVB website and my first reaction was "Oh my! This looks complicated". Having a further look, it wasn't really, they'd just put in more of the characters on the map than usual. I thought I'd translate all their relationships into English! (See below)


From the two episodes that I've watch so far, both Kent and Wayne should be Pierre's advisor, but apparently Kent becomes Chris' advisor later on. Also I don't know if it was intended, but there is no line connecting Elaine Yiu and Wayne Lai together, when they are in love. Does it mean that their relationship is to be short lived?

The following are relationships that I learnt from reading the synopsis on TVB's website. They may be already well known already, but don't read if you want to find out yourself any more relationships between the characters! I'm also making some guesses to what is going to be happening to the characters. They're probably wrong!


Again, after only watching the first two episodes, not much has been shown yet. I know that Wayne will get separated with his siblings, even though the King said that they could reunite. His little brother is going to unwillingly become an eunuch and his sister will lose her memory, then brought up by Krystal Tin. It's confusing because Wayne's little brother is in fact Patrick Tang, and his little sister is Natalie Tong.
It seems the three siblings won't know their relationships, Natalie for obvious reasons, and Wayne won't recognise Patrick as his will be called by his eunuch name. Patrick should recognise Wayne though, so I wonder how the storyline goes from there.

Their relationships will probably get more complicated as Patrick is under Florence Kwok, but Wayne will be against her. This means the brothers will be against each other. At least his little sister develops feelings for Pierre, who Wayne is working for. But TVB style, she'll probably get murdered by Vivien Yeo out of jealousy. Probably just before she finds out who her brothers are.

Another confusing thing is why Natalie is apparently Shek Sau's daughter when she was brought up by Krystal, and Krystal has no relation to Shek Sau?



Original picture from TVB at http://programme.tvb.com/drama/kingmaker/castmap/:

Translated to English:

So they are my initial thoughts. Maybe I got fooled by the TVB synopsis or the character chart. I predict lots of big scenes of Wayne and Kent arguing, lots of women crying, and touchwood, probably a sad ending. If so with the latter, I think I'm going to throw a little tantrum and cry. Happy ending please, TVB!