series 411: "the family link"

Title: The Family Link (See Lai Bing Tuen)
Casts: Sheren Tang, Kiki Sheung, Cecilia Yip, Michael Tse, etc.
Length: 21 episodes (Cantonese) // 15 tapes (Vietnamese)
Release Date: May 2007 (Canto) // July 2007 (Viet)
Genre: Modern Drama/Family/Women/Comedy

Note: Please credit "MetalAZNWarrior" and/or this site if you should use my translation of the series' plot! I worked hard to translate it, so please don't just steal or use it for another site without my permission and/or credit. Thank you!

Synopsis:
Unafraid of the heavens,
Unafraid of the earth,
Supporting the entire family

Are housewives idle with restless lives? Mung Ga Ga (Sheren Tang Shui Man), Ding Mooi Heung (Cecilia Yip Tung), and Cho Mei Ngoh (Kiki Sheung Tin Ngoh) will tell you that the life of housewives is actually very much like a battle ground. Besides endless housework which they must do, they also have to attend to every minute happenings in the family. It requires them to be vigilant at all times.

For instance, because Ga suspected that her husband, Fong Yin Jo (Michael Tse Tin Wah), likes to dress up in drag, she suffers from chronic anxiety. Heung acquired a sexually transmitted disease from her husband. For the sake of her husband, Ngoh fakes a divorce, but who could have imagined that he actually has another woman outside? Being a widow isn't easy, just as being a widower isn't as well. Neighbor Ko Wing Kuen (John Chiang Dai Wai) became a widower after his wife died early, causing him to be unbearably distressed.

On the other hand, the wife of tea house owner Gam Sing Chun (Kenneth Ma Kwok Ming) commits suicide. Her good friend Su Siu Man (Leila Tong Ning) determines that several housewives all said hurtful things to her and so she decides to seek revenge...

My thoughts: The Family Link is being marketed as TVB's version of America's monster hit Desperate Housewives. With a strong central focus on the lives of a circle of housewife friends as well as a main suicide mystery, it seems that TVB has the recipe of Housewives down, but how will the final product turn out? I think Link will be more realistic and dramatic and not a mix of campy, hysterically outrageous comedy and poignant drama with an overtone of satire and over-the-top soap opera plots like the American version.

The poster is very creative and if it is well-received and produced, I think Link will do for Hong Kong wives what Housewives did for American wives - paint them as colorful people with feelings, desires, and passions... exposing the "secret" lives of housewives. Many people think that the lives of housewives are boring because all they do are housework and cater their families, so they don't really have "lives" of their own. On the contrary, this is but a faulty misconception. A housewife is as real of a person as anyone else.

I'm looking forward to watching this series because the plot seems different and creative and I'm a Housewives fan, so I want to see how this series fares. I just hope it will not be an embarrassment as TVB's proclaimed Sex and the City was. Sheren is extraordinary and Michael and Sheren make such a compatible pairing, so I'm sure it won't be too bad.