I grew up with Hong Kong TV dramas and movies. That’s where I first got my aspiration to become an actor. However, I don’t write about them that much, as not a lot of people around the world understand Cantonese, and there are not a lot of Hong Kong programs that have English subtitles for a wider audience.
Since I moved back to Australia, I had more or less lost touch with a lot of Hong Kong programs, as I didn’t have easy access to them. However, things changed with the availability of streaming and when Hong Kong television channels started to host some of their programs on YouTube.
In recent years there were a lot of talks about Hong Kong drama have become fast food or plastic drama that did not innovate but just keep churning out the same thing in different skins or packages. That to me is more the less true. The old plot twists are no longer plot twists, and old character arcs are not really arcs but re-telling of the same story with a different face (well sometimes the same faces too).
However, every now and then came along a memorable and utterly different program that stays with you long after the programme is over. A few years ago, it was Barrack O’Karma (金宵大廈). This year, it is AI Romantic (智能愛人).
The premise of AI Romantic was not that ground breaking, but for me it was how it developed all the characters, and how the characters evolved was very interesting. That was the reason that kept me coming back. Apart from your typical AI Android versus human debate, it was also an investigation into human nature itself. The exploration of whether emotion and feelings define what it meant to be human, or they became triggers that makes the human race less, well, human. The desire of humans trying to create AI Androids that can fill the void of their hearts with implanted memories and capability to learn new information and retrieve information on the fly also reflected an aspect of life that humans were longing for – perfect relationships to a point that it could become selfish and unsustainable.
Ali Lee (李佳芯), as the main AI protagonist Ah Bo delivered a perfect performance throughout. Her subtleness as an Android and the gradual development of the AI capabilities to understand human emotions, both positive and negative, was nearly flawless. I have seen her in many other dramas, some I liked her better than others, but in AI Romantic, you can definitely see that she had spent time understand how this character works, from her movements (being an Android gradually imitating human movements without defying the physics of her mechanical parts), to her subtle facial movement that gradually developed over time, they were just flawlessly timed.
Billy Luk (陸永), one of the dynamic duos of the rap group Farmers, was an interesting choice for me. He is well known for his comedic timing, which was quite useful for the earlier parts of the series, but I did have doubt whether he could deliver the more serious and intense scenes later in the series. The fact that he managed to do that was a pleasant surprise. It looks like he is now on the way to gradually morph into a more versatile actor, than just a comedic actor, which will serve him well as he moved from his singing career into an acting career. He is talented, that is without a question, but acting and rapping, or MC’g are very different. The fact that he can delivered those emotional and intense scenes with precision demonstrated that there is still a lot of life left for him as a performer.
There is a huge supporting cast for the show too. Crystal Fung as Dorian (馮盈盈) had hits and misses throughout. There were a number of scenes you can see that she was actually ‘acting’ instead of living and breathing the character like Ali Lee did. But for me, her greatest improvement was I could finally understand what she was saying. This is, for the first time, since I recognised her from her Miss Hong Kong days, that she could utter every single word clearly without clipping them. There was a period that I had no idea what she was talking about in half of her conversations, be it a chat show, a variety show or a TV drama. AI Romantic demonstrated that she made a lot of efforts to correct this huge defect of her as an actor, and I look forward to see her further improvement as a performer.
Angelina Lo (盧宛茵), Ram Chiang (蔣志光) and Mayanne Mak (麥美恩) formed the quartet of Billy Luk’s on screen family. There were no doubts that Angelina Lo and Ram Chiang would deliver, as they were veteran thespians akin to acting royalty in the Hong Kong TV industry. They practically owned all the characters they play and sometimes I did feel that the TV industry should give them more substantial roles to showcase their talents. Mayanne Mak, for me had improved here and there, but one of the things she needed to pay attention was her tendency to just getting so loud regularly, making it impossible to distinguish her anger from her happiness, or her frustration from her excitement. I think if she wants to develop an acting career, the first thing to do is to do some serious voice training, so she could have more ways to use her voice instead of keeping it on a mono-level. In terms of managing facial emotion, she had improved, but her voice is what is really holding her back.
There are two other actors I really wanted to highlight – one was Tyson Chak (泰臣) who played the AI Android Rocky. I don’t really know this actor very well, but his display of different versions of this Security AI model was spectacular. From behaving in different ways under different owners, to later his storyline with C Kwan and Mayanne Mak, he just managed those moments with perfect precision. There is also a kid (徐嘉謙) who played a pivoted role in the series. I do not him very well, and can’t discuss his role or there would be spoilers. But I think he displayed immense potential should he wants to develop a full fledge career as an actor in the future.
The other aspect I quite about AI Romantic as a show was the retro set production in the middle of this high-tech storytelling. I personally feel that it breathed some fresh air into the series, as a lot of similar TV dramas, Hong Kong or western, they were too focused on making the production art so futuristic that it alienated the human aspects of the show. With a retro artistic direction, it provided a perfect compare and contrast about the culturally traditional human world with the ambition to create a purely technology based future world. This, in my opinion, gave us a much richer world for us to explore throughout the series.
I wish more people can watch this series, as I think it is really good. There were precedents that Netflix acquired TV series from this TV channel in Hong Kong. If Netflix did so, I will highly recommend everyone to have a look.
