New ViuTV Drama Produced by Bowie Lam is Already a Critical Success
Directed by Fatball and 25, and produced by Bowie Lam (林保怡) who also stars in the show, new Viu TV drama The Gutter <歎息橋> is slated to premiere in Hong Kong next week on May 11, 2020. Set to air in the 9:30 p.m. timeslot, The Gutter is a romantic drama about the co-owners of an Italian restaurant, Massam.
Bowie stars as the male lead Thomas, and Catherine Chau (周家怡) stars as his girlfriend, Sammy. Hanjin Tan (陳奐仁), Michelle Wai (衛詩雅), and Christine Ng (伍詠薇) also star. The Gutter is Bowie and Catherine’s first collaboration since 2016’s Margaret and David: Green Bean <瑪嘉烈與大衛系列 – 綠豆>.
“Thomas is a very introverted character,” shared Bowie. “He’s altruistic, but he doesn’t know how to express his love. He’s afraid that after confessing, he’ll lose the person. He’s very confused.”
The Gutter took two years to plan and an additional year to prepare. “In the past, I’d just clock out if the scene didn’t involve me,” said Bowie when asked to compare his new producing job to being an actor. “But now, I’m there from morning to night. I’d be in close communication with every single actor.”
The Gutter had already premiered on March 28 in mainland China via streaming platform, Youku. On Douban, the series received an 8.8 out of 10 rating, exceeding TVB’s Barrack O’Karma <金宵大廈>, which received an 8.3. “Thank you to the viewers for supporting and rating the show,” said Bowie. “I was so happy after reading the reviews. I hope it’ll make Hong Kong proud!”
For his future goals, Bowie would like to continue contributing to the Hong Kong television drama industry. “I think it’s time for me to do something. I should do something. It was fortunate that I was introduced to Fatball and 25, so I was able to turn this dream into a reality. I hope my next project will maintain this rating.”
Asking if it was easy to “defeat” his old employer TVB, Bowie said, “No one’s losing or winning here. I won’t consider it a competition. I just hope that every camera angle and every word in my series is able to help the viewers to break down the mysteries of this romantic drama.”
Does Bowie feel pressure that he would be competing against the popular The Exorcist’s 2nd Meter <降魔的2.0> at TVB? He said, “TVB actually did contact me about that. They will do 8:30, and we will do 9:30. It’s perfect timing. After watching that one you can watch this one.”
Source: HK01.com
This article is written by Addy for JayneStars.com.
Did Bowie Lam change his last name? LOL.
It’s good that tvb feels pressured and there’s competition. Hope this continues because a healthy competition will bring the best out of the 2.
At the threshold of an era was rumoured to be made due to the pressure from ATV at the time haha
Wow, this article says nothing about the series at all… The snippet of Bowie talked about his char totally doesn’t match the trailer clip. It looks like slice of life; gotta go find more info myself now lol.
Really gotta stop comparing and making everything TVB centric. 99% of their drama contents are crappy now. Just let it go, let it goooo
@jjwong There are people out there who still think that all drama series that come out of HK are produced by TVB. I was doing some searches of ViuTV series on the internet earlier and actually came across several websites that listed the series as TVB series, lol…I thought it was funny to be quite honest but if I were ViuTV management, I would be offended because of how crappy TVB’s series are nowadays. But it’s also a reminder once again to not believe everything you read on the internet, lol.
Anyway…there is actually quite a bit of stuff out there about this series. There are even articles written in English that talk about the series (meaning it’s been getting attention outside of HK). Let me see if I can dig up those ones…I know I still have the links somewhere…
@llwy12 Found the complete clip of this promo https://youtu.be/o9_ANz_vtcw
If I was ViuTV, I would be piss too when people think it’s TVB. ViuTV needs to do more branding. IDK if they have or haven’t been. It’ll take time to weed out that stigma for sure. It was the same with HKTV
@jjwong Yup…though to be honest, I don’t think ViuTV really cares, since they’ve proven over the past 2 years through the quality of their productions that they can be a formidable presence. There‘s an award thing that the media association in HK does every year where they choose the best TV programs that year…TVB and RTHK used to dominate the list, but the last one, ViuTV took almost all the top spots with their programs…TVB only had 1 program in top 10 and it wasn’t even a TV series if I remember correctly (I believe it was some infotainment program that they air). I think if ViuTV stays on the path of focusing on content and production rather than politics, the quality will speak for itself and they’ll have a good chance of surpassing TVB in a few years…
Also, here’s a good article about The Gutter series that gives more insight about the storyline and filming aspects: http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202004/22/WS5e9f8f3da3105d50a3d17dae_1.html
@llwy12 Cool, thanks!
Glad to hear that HKTV is doing well locally. Hope the best for them. Healthy competition is good.
Side note: I hope the series isn’t this gray/dark all the time. This is like Battle of Winterfell expanded over 20(?) episodes. Lol.
Edit: Read that article. I like the thoughts and details they put it the series. It sounds very much like how HKTV ran their drama.
CATHERINE CHAU?? I’m down!
Also that’s some stronk color grading…will have to get used to it.
I’ll check this drama for sure. I miss bowie on screen. First Cantonese drama in a few years for me.
I’ll check out this drama. Previous ViuTV dramas haven’t been that great to me. But this sounds interesting
Love Bowie! Missed him on TVB series, will check this one out, hopefully it’s good.
Yes, finally! Been waiting for this series ever since Bowie mentioned awhile back ago that he would be reuniting with the Margaret and David: Green Bean team (Catherine, Fatball, and 25) to produce a series. I’ve been reading up on the series and so far, it truly has been getting high acclaim, plus seeing how good M&D was, gives me confidence that this will be a series worth watching. Can’t wait!