Catch This Splendid Act
by Leslie Fong
(Reproduced from The Strait Times. Saturday, August 9, 1980).

Man in the Net, the new Cantonese television serial replacing Chameleon from tomorrow night, is like wine of a rare and exquisite vintage - it is to be savoured slowly or not at all.

To catch it in snatched, and in between sitting-room chatter, is akin to gulping down Louton Rotschild 1926 as if it is a cheap plonk - and just as senseless.

Not that it is likely to be the case. Chances are that viewers will be so hooked on the serial they will not dare blink lest they miss something. It is that good.

As the Americans would put it in their best (or worst) violation of the English language, those who think Chameleon is superb ain't seen nothing yet!

STORYLINE

the chairman of a statutory body and some of his board members will testify to that. They devoted the first 20 minutes or so of a recent board meeting to a spirited discussion of the serial, which they had all seen on videotape.

So will the housewife who had to be carried off, against her will, to bed and rest by her two sons after watching on videotape 12 episodes of the 80-episode serial, or nine continuous hours. She had wanted to go on but her sons felt enough was enough.

Like fine wine, Man in the Net, a Hong Kong Television and Broadcasting production, has everything - flavour, body, colour and an after-taste that lingers on and on.

The script is the work of a team of writers. Though different episodes were written by different writers, continuity is there, and the serial suffers not one second of it.

AS serials of such genre go, the storyline is long and perhaps a little complicated. Thus some viewers may find the opening episodes a little confusing as character after character is introduced and the scene set for the intense drama to follow.

They will do well to remember that the first few sips of even the finest wine do not usually reveal its quality. That will come through and tingle and please, but first, a little patience.

And how it comes through for Man in the Net once the momentum picks up. Viewers will find all they want in the story, and the authorities, all the moral values they feel Singaporeans should have.

The serial is about filial piety - how the leading male character, the Man in the Net, Ching Wai, a university graduate, sacrifices his future by misappropriating company funds to save his gambler mother from the vicious jaws of loan sharks.

It is about righteousness 0 how the moral and thinking man should behave even in modern, urbanised society amid all the temptations and pervasive materialism.

It is also about love - the love that keeps a family together through thick and thin, the love between men and women that burns deep into the soul, the love between true friends for which no sacrifice is too great.

All it is about justice, how it triumphs against all odds, and the many ills of Kong Kong society - the greed, corruption, the despair and desperation felt by the illegal immigrants from China, and the mindless pursuit of wealth and material comfort.

Tribute must be paid to the skills of the scriptwriters for weaving all these into a coherent story and in a way that makes the title all the more meaningful.

For the CHinese character for the word net, or web, can be used in conjunction with different words to denote different things.

Example: Ching Wai, jailed for the misappropriation, is caught in the net of laws, as the ChInese would describe it.

BEcause two women have fallen hopelessly in love with him and he torn between them, he is thus bound in the net of love.

One of the two women, Ow Hew Wah, an actress "sold" by her avaricious mother to the rich playboy as mistress, is also trapped inside her own net or web, in a Chinese manner of speaking. Bird in a gilded cage would probably be the metaphor Western writers would use.

The villain in the serial Yuen Keh Cheong, who is out to fix Ching Wai at every turn, is caught too in a net of greed as he turns to grand larceny and even murder in his pursuit of wealth.

And so the various interpretations go. All this is possible to the richness of the dialogue, written as it is primarily for the Cantonese audience in Hong Kong and therefore not really suitable for dubbing into Mandarin. Good thing SBC has held it hand.

SCENES THAT WILL LINGER IN YOUR MEMORY

What really puts this serials o many cuts above Chameleon is the quality of the acting by its starstudded cast.

Everyone. bit player or veteran supporting actor, has put in a splendid performance. But worthy of special mention is the brilliant acting of the male and female leads - Chow Yuen Fatt, who plays Ching Wai, and Cheng Yu Ling, who plays Fong Hey Man, the other woman in his life.

Beside them, Chameleon's Ah Lup and Ah Mui pale into insignificance, little better than fumbling amateurs in a school play.

No better accolade can one shower on Chow and Cheng than the Cantonese expression"yup hei" - which describes that accomplished state when an actor has become the role he is playing.

Chow, tall, elegant and with dark eyes so smoldering they can melt a girl's heart at 20 paces, is memorable especially in the way he conveys the strength and depth od character that is in Ching Wai.

Some of the major scenes featuring him at his best still flash through my mind as I write this, vividly and with undiminished poignancy even though I saw them many weeks ago.

There is Chow or Ching Wai, tears rolling from despairing eyes as wardens give him the regulation haircut the days he enters prison.

HAUNTING

There is also Chow or Ching Wai, numbed by the death of Hew Wah, played admirable bb Owyeong Pui San, and refusing to accept it is true.

He stumbles from the hospital to the boutique she owned, knocks repeatedly at the glass door, calling in a voice turned shriller by shock and grief, her name. The hurt in his eyes, as the heart rejects what the mind knows to be true, will break the hardest heart.

Cheng, as Hey Man, is vivacity with the capital V. The role calls for the portrayal of emotions that run gamut from unfettered joy and elation to inexorable sorrow and anguish.

There is Cheng or Hey Man, trying to cheer her father up as he is wasting away in hospital from liver cancer, not wanting him to know the bad news but not knowing that he already knew.

The tears welling in her eyes as she tries to make light conversation, the tilt of the head to avoid looking the father in the eye, the breaking of the voice in mid-conversation...the performance is magnificent.

Put Cheng and Chow together, and acting becomes truly an art. The combined magic erupts in one powerful scene, which I regard as the best in the entire serial, when they become locked in each other's arms, lovers again after all the trials and tribulations.

I won't rob viewers of their pleasure by describing how that scene builds up, if at all words can do justice to that.

I need only to add this: Listen carefully also to the very haunting themesong in this scene as it is arranged and played by what must be a full string orchestra and piano. It grips you crescendo after crescendo and lends that final touch to an unforgettable scene.

Such is the genius of TVB's ace composer and music director Joseph Koo - and such is the finesse with which different talents were blended together in a memorable production.