Before A Song of Ice and Fire, there was a legendary TV series from Hong Kong. If you think the Red Wedding is disgusting, this legendary series had done it years before George R. R. Martin published the book A Game of Thrones . The series that I'm talking about is of course the epic, released in 1992 Hong Kong during the peak TVB Jade - The Greed of Man 大时代.
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| The Greed of Man 大时代 |
Revisiting the series as an adult, I have to say, this is the greatest TVB show ever. It sets in the financially volatile age of Hong Kong where the stock market was highly competitive. Spanning across 3 decades, this is an epic mainly about the feud between Fongs family and Tings family. Come to think about it, I seriously think it could have very well inspired the feud between the Starks and the Lannisters in the the book series A Song of Ice and Fire.
Themes involved in the The Greed of Man are heavy, such as gambling of millions and billions dollars, human lives are at stake, suicide, bribery, government and police corruption, gangs violence, rape, etc.. Definitely not as obscene as in Game of Thrones HBO series, the sex and violence are only implied in The Greed of Man. But I don't see it as a negative. In fact, it just proves that in terms of good story telling, the gore and boob scenes in Game of Thrones are mostly gimmicks to lure the audience in. In The Greed of Man, the first 15mins of the very first episode is already very shocking - a father forcing his sons to commit suicide by jumping off the building. While a few of them are understandably reluctant, the father grabs them and throws them off the building one by one. It then follows by a scene that pretty much spoils the series by telling the audience all the characters who died.
An excellent story also needs good realistic characters. Although the protagonists are Fong Chun-sun and his son Fong Chin-bok, they are not pure good people per se as they've made some morally grey decisions in the series. To me, the only outright virtuous character is Lo Wai-ling. Perhaps Fong Man, the youngest of the Fongs family, can also be considered virtuous. But I think she is too innocent and she hasn't taken any actions to qualify. Good characterization is proven when I get so emotional when the good guys die. A few of scenes that I still remember vividly are for example when Fong Chin-bok lashes out on Ho Chin, showing his scar for life after his father's life got violently ended by Ting Hai in front of his eyes, or when Lo Wai-ling dies while holding very dearly the ring which Fong Chun-sun never had the chance to put on to her finger.
Meanwhile, the Tings family, the bad guys of the series are even better characters than the good guys. Ting Hai as the main antagonist is a good character study. He is a villain like no other. I have been trying to find an equivalent in all the movies or TV shows I've seen before but my effort has been in vain. Starts off as a professional cage fighter, he is physically strong but also a coward. He has a distorted sense of morality, he is self-centered, lack of empathy, driven by pure rage, a borderline sociopath. But he is also extremely lucky which makes the audience so want to punch the TV.
As great as it is as a drama, I think the series should only be viewed as a fiction because of some fantasy elements deployed to dramatize the plot. The fantasy elements that I'm talking about are the plot devices like a person could theoretically "calculate" tomorrow's stock market evolution and the tactics the characters used in the stock market with heavy influence from the story of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. If these are taken at face value, they might be bad and borderline gambling advices for investing in the stock market.
I also think that the romance in the series is very laughable because to put simply, it is a man's fantasy. A classic love triangle among Fong Chin-bok, Yuen Mui, and Lung Kei-mun, two beautiful women are both equally willing to sacrifice while at the same time they both think the other one is more deserving of the happily-ever-after love with Fong Chin-bok. It is sort of like a reverse Twilight.
All things considered, The Greed of Man is an outstanding TV series. Not to mention that there is even a Disney-like duet in the series! Highly recommended!
To sidetrack a bit, I imagine this would be perfect to be adapted into English as a Netflix show. I would imagine it to be adapted into 4 seasons: first season ends with Fong Chun-sun died by the second punch from Ting Hai; 2nd season starts with the aftermath of the death of Fong Chun-sun to the Fongs family and ends with Fong Chin-bok first success in stock exchange market; 3rd season starts with the return of Ting Hai to Hong Kong and ends with the Fongs family get killed; and finally the last season with the victorious comeback of Fong Chin-bok to bankrupt the Tings family.
