Overview:
Highs and Lows is a Hong Kong television series produced by TVB, this series belongs in the genre of crime, thriller and action. Consisting of 30 episodes, this series reached a peaking point of 38 points when the finale of this series aired. Highs and Lows aired from September 2 to 4 November 2012. The series stars Michael Miu, Raymond Lam, Kate Tsui, Ella Koon, Elaine Ng, Ben Wong and more. This series is also the last series of Ella Koon and Elaine Ng in TVB.
Main Cast:
Michael Miu（苗侨伟） as Gordon Heung Wing （向荣）
Raymond Lam（林峰） as Happy Wai Sai Lok （韦世乐）
Kate Tsui（徐子珊） as Chan Ka Pik （陈家碧）
Ben Wong（黄智贤） as Brian Poon Hok Lai（潘学礼）
Ella Koon（官恩娜） as Sandy Ko Hei Suen （高希璇）
Elaine Ng（吴绮莉） as Helen Yu Weng Tong（于詠彤）
MC Jin（欧阳靖） as Ng Dak Tim（吴德添）
Plot (Spoilers!):
Heung Wing (Michael Miu) is a Narcotics Bureau’s Operation Wing Senior Inspector, who has served a friend and mentor to Wai Sai Lok’s (Raymond Lam) Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) Senior Inspector. The duo often work closely together in solving narcotics cases.
While investigating a case, Sai Lok found disturbing evidence that challenged whether Heung Wing was an upright officer or a corrupt cop involved with major drug trafficking criminals. Putting aside his personal feelings, Sai Lok investigates Heung Wing further. Operation Wing Chief Inspector, Poon Hok Lai (Ben Wong) also plants a seed of suspicion between the former good brothers.
Sai Lok find himself falling in love with his informer Chan Ka Bik (Kate Tsui)after going through several near-death moments. After Ka Pik withdrew from the love triangle involving Sai Lok and CIB Officer, Ko Hei Suen (Ella Koon) as she thinks she isn’t good enough for him. Ka Bik becomes a drug dealer, even rising in ranks to become a formidable “Drug Queen. Joining forces with Heung Wing, Sai Lok puts aside his painful love to bring down Ka Bik’s narcotics operations.
Song Thoughts:
Theme Song 主题曲 – Theme of Highs and Lows
Interlude 插曲 – 《幼稚完》Raymond Lam 林峰
This series doesn’t really have a theme song, rather it has a more melodic/ instrumental opening without any lyrics. I think that it does suit this series as it is high dynamics at the same time not extremely intense which complements the series. The interlude is a song which I have already been a huge fan of before watching this series. After watching this series, I has caused me to approach this song with a completely different vibe and story. Just like in previous series I personally associate songs with different stories depending on the events where the song has been played behind. Even though Raymond and Kate doesn’t have an extended love story, I still associate this song with this couple as they still care for each other despite not being together, together (if you know what i mean) I think that this song is AMAZING as it is and made even more touching with the story of this series.
Review:
This series is a series that I’ve been wanting to watch for awhile but have been putting off due to the new series coming out this year. I have heard a lot of great response for this series hence why I approached it with high expectations. I would say that it doesn’t disappoint … that is until the last few episode (it was still great, just didn’t live up to my expectations). Don’t get me wrong though, I still really enjoyed this series. I think that the plot was amazing despite some rather questionable loopholes and places where things just doesn't make sense. This series is great in a sense where the topic that they discuss is uncommon … relative to TVB. In terms of the fact that the story revolves around the unit of Narcotics Bureau unlike the ever so familiar OCTB and CID departments. The plot has been well paced so that it keeps the audiences on the edge of their seats despite some part of the story being slightly boring. Highs and Lows is a series where you would be able to episode after episode which is an indication of a great series to me.The characters have also been well established so that their personalities can be easily understood by the audiences within the first few scenes of the character. Let’s move on to the individual character reviews.
Raymond Lam (林峰) → Happy Wai Sai Lok (韦世乐)
First of all, I think that this character was extremely well written and Raymond Lam completely nailed this character. Even though he wasn’t perfect, but at the same time no one is flawless. I think that Raymond really suited this character as he is not afraid to let it go and perfectly execute the type of person Happy Sir is - different, not following the rules but extremely efficient and intelligent. Something that kind of annoys me about this character is the fact is that he is SOO irrational when he faces someone he loves or someone that has hurt the person that he loves, honestly I found this character extremely charming and charismatic at the beginning but as the series progressed, I questioned the sanity of this character. I think that Happy Sir is THE person to go to if you ever need to prove that love is blind. For someone that would go to the length of investigating his close friend to uphold justice, it’s slightly inconsistent to me that he lets Ka Pik (Kate Tsui) just walk away on several occasions after finding out that she not only TAKES drugs but is selling them. But I guess that would be Raymond’s take on the character to prove the power of love on this character. All in all, I really liked this character and he managed to regain that charm and charisma towards the end from the scene of him and the kid.
Kate Tsui (徐子珊) → Chan Ka Pik (陈家碧)
An extremely belated congratulations to Kate for winning the ‘My Favourite Female Character’ award during the TVB Anniversary Awards 2012 for this character. Despite being pulling off this character phenomenally, this character is so inconsistent. A nice character at the start → turns into a ‘Drug Queen’ → unexpectedly stung by conscience after a good 10 episodes to be nice and inform Happy about the ambulance in the last episode. Anyways, I honestly think that Kate executed this character perfectly and I can’t think of anyone else better suited for this character than her, those crying scenes were amazing. Not desperately pouring but just quietly sobbing. The way that she brings this character to life is truly remarkable as she is able to convey the hidden meanings behind each of her actions to the audience without being overly obvious. Her scenes with MC Jin were also nice to watch as they were natural around each other which really brings the closely-knitted friendship between the characters to life.
Michael Miu (苗侨伟) → Gordon Heung Wing (向荣)
As always Michael Miu doesn’t disappoint. Watching this series in 2018, it’s a change to see him as the ‘corrupted cop’/’black cop’ as compared to him trying to find out who the corrupted cop is in the series that he participated in the recent years such as Line Walker (使徒行者) , Line Walker: The Prelude (使徒行者2) and not forgetting Flying Tigers (飞虎之潜行极战) 😉. Personally, I wouldn’t classify Gordon as a corrupted cop as he didn’t REALLY do anything that betrayed the police force, I mean he DID let several drug dealers off the hook, but he did out more of them behind the bars thanks to the ‘Agent’. I don’t know anymore, I guess there’s that grey area in between. His acting skills was great, convincing - especially towards the end. I like that his character still remained ‘good’ disregarding the incident where he was mistaken for keeping the money for himself. The fact that he died trying to protect Happy and the scene where he told Raymond that he didn’t want him to be involved in this because he treated him as a brother was truly touching. I like that they provided an ending to this character in a sense that they showed the marriage between him and Madam Yu despite him being dead.
Ben Wong (黄智贤)→ Poon Hok Lai (潘学礼)
Ben Wong was the perfect person to pull off the ever so annoying officer-turned-villain character. Despite the character being poorly written and a lot of dumb and illogical decisions, Ben Wong managed to execute it well. The difference between the way where he treats Sandy and the way which she treats everyone else is very evident which made me believe for a moment that he isn’t as bad of a person as I thought. But one of the many ‘what-the-hell’ events that happened with this character would be the fact the 180 change that this character experience when he just decided to leave the police force and join one of the most prominent ‘drug selling association’ out there. Overall, I genuinely enjoyed his acting in this series despite not being a very likable character.
Ending:
Most probably one of the most controversial endings I have seen for a while which is why I have dedicated a section just for it 😉. (this may just turn out to be a section for rants but..) First of all, I think that when Ka Pik ‘survived’ the bomb in the ambulance and came out to save Happy was really cliche but why would the scriptwriter make Pat survive the bombing just for her to be shot by Poon Sir five minutes later, and the whole point of her being shot was just so that she would be able to tell Poon Sir that she is having his child. And talking about the child, who in the right mind would choose to keep the child of their enemy?! I get it that the child is innocent and deserves to live, but what would be the point of bringing him/her into the world if you know that the child is just going to bring up bad memories of your enemy, this got me thinking that she would’ve most probably kept the child if she were to be pregnant from the gang rape. Additionally, she may seem to be selfless when she thought that she should keep the baby because ‘the baby is innocent’ but did she ever take into consideration that she is a drug addict and that could cause so much harm to the baby as well as her status in life where she is financially unstable. One other question that I had after watching the ending would be ‘why the hell would Ah Fu (Jazz Lam) and Ah Seng (Law Lok Lam) confess to their crimes after Gordon died for them. I mean it makes sense that they did that to get over their conscience but at the same time, this scene just makes Gordon’s death scene meaningless and that he died for nothing.
Anyways, the ending wasn’t all that bad, I liked the pacing of the ending where it wasn’t too rushed nor too draggy. Even though the ending was extremely ‘TVB’ too be way too perfect and happy, I was relieved and surprised that Sandy and Happy didn’t end up together as it just wouldn’t make sense if Happy suddenly just realised that he actually loves her despite not showing ANY sign of interest in her throughout the 30-episode long series. Another thing that I enjoyed about this ending is the fact that even though there were a lot of people who died in the last episode, I think that all of them died for a reason unlike other series *cough The Unholy Alliance cough*.
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