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| Office Girls image: https://www.pinterest.pt/pin/795448352904958189/ |
This should be a shorter piece than the last several postings, since I’m
only going to discuss three Taiwanese TV shows.
The first one,
Office Girls, is one of my all time favorites. It’s a 40
episode romantic comedy soap opera. It actually offers an interesting
mix of genres, ranging from pure soap opera to slapstick comedy
including strange sound effects, and romance, of course. But what I
think sets it apart from similar shows I’ve watched, is the great
acting and chemistry between the two romantic leads.
Office Girls (40
episodes Netflix)
The main “office
girl” and female romantic lead Sheng Xin Ren, played by Ko
Chia-yen, AKA, Alice Ko. She is a hardworking office worker in a
“department store” in Taipei Taiwan. It is a rather interesting
setting. The department store is more of what we would call a mall,
with independent shops. However, they are all housed in something
like an eight story, block-sized building like an old, traditional
downtown department store. The male romantic lead, Qin Zi Qi, played
by Roy Chiu, is the playboy son of the department store’s owner.
After arriving back from an extended stay in the US to earn his MBA,
his father insists that if he wants to inherit the business, he must
put in a year’s work as a regular employee, plus live on that
modest salary, and not tell anyone who he is. And so off we go, with
a pampered rich boy trying to live on what he sees as next to
nothing, while slowly falling in love with the office girl in his
department.
What makes this show
work for me is appealing characters, both lead and supporting, the
quality of their acting, their onscreen chemistry, and just as
importantly, the quality of the writing. As with all these types of
shows, the road of romance is never straight, especially one of 40
episodes, and the story does rather veer into familiar soap opera
territory towards the end. Still, for me, the characters and their
acting are more than enough to carry me along, even if I think things
become a little soapier than I’d like. My wife loved the show as
well, and as far as I’m concerned, this is is light, escapist
entertainment at its best. Five stars.
The second Taiwanese
show is another comedy/romance/soap opera. There seem to be dozens of
them from Taiwan on Netflix. This one is called Miss Rose, and
features Roy Chiu once again as the male romantic lead, paired with a
new female lead played by Megan Lai.
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| Miss Rose Image: https://whatsnewonnetflix.com/usa/12705/miss-rose-2015 |
Miss Rose (35
episodes Netflix)
Megan Lai plays an
office worker who gets entangled with Roy Chiu’s character, a high
powered business man, and a long romance ensues, tangled, with a plot
line of corporate intrigue. The mean girl from Office Girls
plays Megan Lai’s nice best friend in this show, and several other
actors from Office Girls make their appearances in this show
as well. We both enjoyed it, though its not quite as good as Office
Girls, so four stars.
As I mentioned,
there are a ton of other Taiwanese shows similar these two, and I’ve
sampled several more, some with actors from those two shows. One was
Bromance which stared Megan Lai From Miss Rose, who played a
girl raised as a boy, unconvincingly so. And as the plot soon veered
into a rather unbelievable course, I gave up on that one after
episode 3. I’ve watched the first episode or two of several more
that either failed to hook me, or that I felt I’d wait to continue
until I could watch them with my wife.
The last show in
this post is La Grande Chaumiere Violette.
Now this is not a romantic/comedy/soap opera, but rather, a
historical drama – which happens to star Alice Ko (Ko Chia-yen) of
Office Girls fame, which is enough to get me to watch it.
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| La Grande Chaumiere Violette image: https://uk.newonnetflix.info/info/81020668 |
La Grande Chaumiere
Violette (22 episodes Netflix)
The story is told in
flashbacks from the 1980’s. It tells the story of a group of famous
Taiwanese artists from the late 1920’s to the 1940’s. During most
of this era, Taiwan was the Japanese colony of Formosa, and its
people were treated as second class citizens. The show tells the
stories of these artists set against the backdrop of repression by
the Japanese, and the political unrest as a consequence of it. Then,
after the Japanese defeat in WWll, they are occupied by the
Nationalist Chinese from the mainland, which prove to be just as bad
if not worse than the Japanese. As such, it is not quite my usual
light entertainment, but since it concerns art, tea, (the point of
view character’s family owns a tea business) and Alice Ko, I
watched and enjoyed it. Four stars.
There are still many
Taiwanese TV shows to sample, when I have the time. But for now, my
next reviews will feature TV shows from Korea – “K-Dramas” –
including another of my all time favorite shows.
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