Books By C. LItka

Books By C. LItka

Friday, April 17, 2020

Remarks and Observations Directed at the Clouds -- Taiwanese TV Shows

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.


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.


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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