TIME BEFORE TIME

This series marked the brief return of Kathy Chow Hoi Mei to TVB. At the same time, it was very successful in introducing the name Gordon Lam Ka Tung into households.

A ghost-human love story might sound like a cliché to a lot of people. However, with a strong cast and a well-written script, this series turned out to be very entertaining and emotional. The story started with the lovers, Siu Fu Yung (Chow Hoi Mei) and Luk Man Kwong (Gordon Lam Ka Tung), who were poisoned on one rainy night. On the way to hospital, Siu Fu Yung died and her soul was trapped in an umbrella. Twenty years later, Hui Tai Kwong (also played by Lam Ka Tung), who is a worker in the shop Kwong Cheung Leung, accidentally released Fu Yung’s soul from the umbrella. Fu Yung mistook Tai Kwong for her lover, Man Kwong, but he did not remember her. Tai Kwong had a childhood sweetheart, Mei Ying (Florence Kwok) who was also very much in love with him. She set out to find the person who was responsible for their tragic deaths twenty years earlier and why Tai Kwong looked exactly like Man Kwong.

Kathy Chow Hoi Mei was perfect as Siu Fu Yung, a heart-broken ghost whose only goal is to be reunited with her lover, Luk Man Kwong. The plot blends the love story of Fu Yung and Man Kwong into the present very well. How their love started and the obstacles that they had to overcome to be together set the background for why Siu Fu Yung was so determined to reunite with Man Kwong. Kathy Chow has an onscreen presence and she graced it with the confidence of an experienced actress and her acting charm. Her various costumes were beautiful and made her stand out from the rest of the cast. Kathy Chow turned in a poignant performance despite after many years away from TVB to prove that she still has what it takes to be a leading actress. Kathy Chow’s Siu Fu Yung is beautiful, demure, gentle, lovely, pitiful but not totally hopeless or useless.

If someone had said to me in the past that Gordon Lam Ka Tung would one day become a popular leading actor, I would not have believed it. To be honest, he doesn’t have the look. At times, I feel that his face is much more suitable for villain roles. Yet Gordon Lam Ka Tung proved himself in this series to be a very capable actor who could act in comedy and drama. As Man Kwong, he was playing a charming, rich man who was devoted to Fu Yung. As Tai Kwong, he was an uneducated but honest and hard-working man. Man Kwong and Tai Kwong may resemble each other but they are essentially two different men. One is of past life, in love with Fu Yung. One is of the present, in love with Mei Ying.

Florence Kwok is an excellent actress who has never been recognized for her talents and always has to take on non-lead roles, to the point that she was fed up with the entertainment circle and retired to work in office. Kenneth Lau delivered a decent performance as a young man who is kind-hearted. The rest of the cast also turned in strong performances.

The series is well edited with the story being told at a balanced pace without confusing the audience. The light-hearted comedy entertained the audience vastly but did not distract them from the main story. The setting is boring since it was in TVB studio but the costumes were beautiful.

*SPOILERS*: The ending bothered me a bit. Even though Fu Yung understood that her Man Kwong was now Tai Kwong and that she was a ghost and he a human so it was impossible for them to be together, she still waited patiently until the day he died so they could reincarnate together. Tai Kwong was happy to meet her when his spirit met hers, so it meant all these years that he had been living with Mei Ying, his heart was still with Fu Yung. Fu Yung never disappeared completely from their lives as Mei Ying had thought; she was always lurking around, waiting for the day that Tai Kwong would be hers.

In one series, you have comedy, romance, ghost, everything in one package. As it was a successful series, other series tried to follow its path such as “Seven Sisters” and “A Loving Spirit”, but these can’t be compared to the good script and excellent cast of “Time before Time”.
PS I do not own this review.