Professional drama, TVB's strength since its heyday.
So which class is the strongest?
The answer is yes.
That is, doctor.
After "Magic Hands and Kindness", "On Call 36 Hours", and "White Strongman", TVB has achieved another medical drama with high-quality reputation.
After the launch of "Benevolent Doctor Under the Stars", the Douban score exceeded 9 points in one fell swoop.
And the rating went from 9.0 to 9.1.
There is "Meritorious Service" in the mainland;
Taiwan has "The Cultivation of Ordinary Women 2";
Hong Kong has finally come up with a "9-point drama".
Facts have proved that if TVB wants to make a serious drama, it can still make good works.
Abandoning the emotional dramas that have been crossed in the past, "The Doctor Under the Stars" puts the main pen and ink on the main line of "occupation".
The style also changed the comedic flavor of the master's milk drama, leaning in the direction of serious drama, the plot is relatively compact, do not drag mud and water, the first episode came three major operations, if you add the prologue is four times.
In fact, the two male protagonists can completely lay the groundwork together, but they did not expect to directly open it, and the cool drama mode was directly opened.
I dare to shoot this way because the story behind it has a bigger and more important goal.
In the prologue to the beginning, the plot uses flashbacks to throw out a suspense.
In 2001, the two male protagonists, Cong Xin and Xu Ganfeng, underwent a failed operation, and the patient's little girl unfortunately died.
What's going on in between?
Also did not let the audience wait, directly the first episode was revealed.
No spoilers here.
Xu Ganfeng, who is always outward-looking and cheerful, has since become estranged from his good brother Cong Xin, and the two have grown up to work in different hospitals and are good at different professions.
Since the two belong to the same pediatric family, by chance, they were reunited.
The coincidences here are much better than the abusive coincidences of various "chance encounters" in previous Hong Kong dramas.
Xu Ganfeng's Northwest Hospital has a limit on specific surgery, can not do surgery, the hospital executives do not dare to take risks, only to find the old acquaintance Cong Xin to help the most reliable.
Because Cong Xin is already a very well-known pediatric surgeon with first-class performance, the Anne Hospital where he works has enough places and enough conditions.
Although the operation has a certain risk, congxin, who is extremely confident and ambitious, and does not lose his conscience, still chooses to face the difficulties.
While promoting the plot, this paragraph criticizes the conservative system of the hospital and shapes the characters, so full of content, how can the reputation be bad.
The whole drama revolves around Kwang Cong Xin's ambition to establish the first pediatric center in Hong Kong.
The combined surgery in the first episode gives Cong Xin the opportunity to realize his ambitions.
With the background of Anne Hospital, if you can join hands with the old acquaintance Xu Ganfeng, plus the return of the same female doctor Zhang Yixin, you can form an impeccable medical team, and the science center here will definitely be able to succeed.
However, the surgical accident many years ago, the contradictions between the teams, became an untime bomb on his ambition.
As a TVB drama, "Doctor Ren Under the Stars" is naturally inseparable from those familiar Hong Kong opera actors.
Unlike the works of the same period, this time there are old actors who have not been seen for a long time.
Zheng Jiaying, who played Xu Ganfeng, returned to TVB again after 4 years of "Fans" in 2017 and became the active atmosphere of the whole drama.
Zhong Jiaxin, who plays Zhang Yixin, announced her departure from the nest in 2018, and "Re-Genesis" became her farewell work.
Unexpectedly, she returned to continue filming after 3 years, and it was rumored that she would also have dramas such as "Forensic Pioneer 5", and her family was happy at the same time, she could still continue her acting career.
Taizhu Ma Guoming's performance is steady, showing the true color of "Master Milk Killer", and the interpretation of Cong Xin is quite in place.
It's a very complex role.
For the sake of his own future, he can choose to compromise with the means of the workplace, but at the same time he is condemned by his conscience, and this contradiction and struggle gives the actor a very large space for performance.
The series now has such a good reputation, and Ma Guoming also has the hope of Na lian Zhuang Shidi.
Last year, he broke the spell of running with him by relying on "White Strongman", and medical themes have become one of his major strengths.
The fly in the ointment is that "Doctor Under the Stars" has not saved TVB's sluggish local ratings.
The last "Hong Kong Love Story", which had reached 9 points, received good ratings, and the treatment of the two was different, probably because of the theme problem.
One is a realistic theme that is very suitable for people's livelihood problems, and the other is a more professional and positive drama, and the audience group is different, which causes differences in ratings.
Now that Zeng Zhiwei has become a high-level person in charge, he can come up with such a divine drama level work, which may prove the role of this high-level change to a certain extent.
Don't think that Tsang Chi-wai is just an actor, in fact, he is one of the "Seven Monsters of the New Art City" that resounded throughout the golden age of Hong Kong cinema, with rich experience in film production, and he can rise to the top not only because of his fame.
How to pull the ratings back has become his biggest challenge after taking office.
In fact, poor ratings are not the end.
In the era of the rise of global streaming, traditional movies and television have been challenged. It is difficult to avoid the continuous decline in ratings, depending on how to convert the reduced part into click-through rate.
TVB does not want to collapse here, it must re-keep up with the pace of the times, as soon as possible to put the streaming media network broadcast channel on the right track.
I believe that a good drama like "The Doctor Under the Stars", if there is proper publicity, there is a good chance that it can at least make a small fire.
It's just that the platform for cooperation in the mainland this time is not the "Aiyouteng" that dominates the market, so the role of word-of-mouth is still very limited, and the audience has a lingering feeling for TVB's rotten tail urine, and it remains to be seen whether it can sit firmly in the position of the annual Hong Kong drama in one fell swoop.