TVB Postpones Broadcast of Grand Production Drama, “Another Era”
Upcoming series, Another Era <再創世紀>, is a sister production to TVB’s 1999 epic 100-episode drama, At the Threshold of an Era <創世紀>. The drama was set to air during the primetime slot, taking over Succession War <天命> after its conclusion on July 30. However, these plans seem to have been placed on hold due to broadcasting license issues, with The Stunt <特技人> taking over the timeslot instead.
Another Era‘s producer, Kwan Shu Ming (關樹明), confirmed the postponement of the drama’s air date. He cited the reason being that the drama has still yet to receive broadcast license in Mainland China. “Actually, we always hoped to air the drama as soon as possible. However, because the drama requires a broadcasting license from Mainland China, we ended up having to wait for the approval to go through. Everything is moving along the process as it should. If we insist that the drama will air at the end of July, it is already the beginning of July now. I don’t believe the license will be processed in time. We would have started promotional events already and scheduled interviews with the media if so.”
Although Kwan Shu Ming did not confirm whether Another Era will air after The Stunt, he did say that the company is reviewing its airing schedule for August. The drama is 36 episodes and boasts a star-studded cast of seasoned actors, including Roger Kwok (郭晉安), Frankie Lam (林文龍), Tavia Yeung (楊怡), Niki Chow (周麗淇).
“Another Era” Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvzxk3lnKP4
Source: HK01
This article is written by Huynh for JayneStars.com.
Interesting, Linda is in this but is not on the poster. The poster made me think Tavia is paired with Frankie, when in fact she’s paired with Roger! And wow, only 36 episodes! Meanwhile all cdrama is like at least 45 episodes long! Will definitely check this one out xD
@littlefish Linda is on the official poster. That’s just a promo pic. She’s playing a guest. Probably not gonna have a lot of promos with her.
Yeah. Niki is on Roger’s side because her role is bigger than Tavia’s.
@tiffany is Niki gonna be Roger’s love interest? I don’t like Niki enough if that’s the case 🙁
@littlefish The pairings are Roger and Tavia. Ben and Niki. Maybe a triangle love with Pakho? Frankie, Linda, and another girl.
Tavia plays Roger’s love interest/sidekick whereas Niki is part of the company/problem.
@littlefish Linda Chung only has a minor supporting role in the drama series as at that time she had to complete her filming obligatations with TVB, and she was residing in Canada after giving birth to her daughter Kelly. TVB filmed her “air time” in Canada, I remember reading an article which Linda mentioned she was most thankful for TVB in being so accommodating and flexible to film in Canada.
I really really enjoyed At the Threshold of an Era , back then it was such a huge hit but yes your right on 36 episodes compared to 100 episodes. Interesting, I guess they know they could never match with the first series!
I like Frankie Lam and Roger Kwok, would be interesting to see both of themi in this series!
Hope they can get the licence approval soon!
see like such a cliche plot? it looks like one of those you screw me, i got to kill you kinda of plot again. i guess it’s really the mainlanders’ taste these days driving the drama. it feels like a wong jing production minus the skimpyly dressed girls.
I’m way more excited for the drama “Baby is Here” with Ali Lee than I am for this one.
I wasn’t a fan of the original (except for its themesong) and don’t anticipate liking this one either (even tho I’m a fan of both Niki & Tavia & Roger.) It just doesn’t relate to me on a personal level.
Looking forward to this, since I did enjoy its precedent.
Never been too keen on Niki’s acting, but I’m excited to see Tavia, Frankie, and Roger together.
Also, I think Roxanne Tong has a lot of potential, so I’m happy to see her appearing in more dramas, despite having smaller roles.
Expect to see more of these delays in the future, since TVB’s priority now is Mainland audiences. They had a similar problem with Deep in the Realm of Conscience back when that series premiered last month, but seemed to be able to overcome that one fairly quickly (if I remember correctly, the Mainland airing of the series was only delayed by a week or so, which is nothing considering Mainland audiences get to watch ahead anyway – while HK audiences have to wait to watch 1 episode at a time, Mainland audiences get to watch 5 to 10 episodes at one time). With that said though, you would think TVB learned their lesson already – honestly, it’s dumb to keep repeating the same mistake over and over again (though of course I’m not surprised since this is TVB after all). If they are serious about penetrating the Mainland market, they need to do a better job of planning ahead and making sure all licenses or whatnot are secured before they announce the airing date for the series. If the DITROC airing delay isn’t enough of an example of what poor planning can do, just look to their former rival ATV, who is still suffering from their earlier epic embarrassment of announcing a remake of a series that they didn’t even have the legal rights to (I’m still shaking my head at how stupid they were).
And no, I am not looking forward to this series because I also liked the original At The Threshold of an Era and to me, this is yet another dumb effort on TVB’s part to piggy back off previous successes rather than come up with new content (and sorry but just comparing casts alone, this version is by far the cheap watered down version). Roger is one of my favorite actors and no doubt he will do an excellent job in here, but I still can’t bring myself to be excited or even remotely interested in this series for some reason….someone asked me if I’m perhaps allergic to TVB nowadays and I’m beginning to think yes I very well might be, lol.
@llwy12
I agree with you. Particularly with your second point.
Do you know if ViuTV and Fantastic TV are producing any drama series? What about ATV? They said they would produce drama series again too.
It seems like if there’s any hope of watching good HK dramas these days you need to lean on web dramas and they are far and between.
I’ve been allergic to TVB for at least the past 10 years. The only time I ever watch them is if there is a veteran actor that I want to see which averages out about 1 or 2 series per year (if even).
With this series in mind, I do intend to watch it for Roger Kwok and Dominic Lam. My focus will be purely on their performance. If I take other aspects into consideration (plot, other actors, dialogue, etc.), it will leave me deeply disappointed.
Tavia is too inconsistent. She hasn’t had a good performance since she won her BA award. Frankie has always been a wooden actor. Nikki is average. Everyone else is average at best.
@anon I mentioned a little bit about the other stations in the other thread about Stephen Shiu Jr’s company remaking that Japanese series…but to answer your question – yes the other stations are filming series, though not a whole lot in comparisons to TVB of course. ATV is still hellbent on remaking A Better Tomorrow into a TV series (and they actually did buy the rights to that one, lol), though very few details have been forthcoming so who knows if / when that will actually happen (especially now that the 3 big guns who were originally running ATV – Ng Yu, Peter Au, and Tsang Sing Ming have officially switched back to being “consultants” now rather than “executives”). And no, they are not remaking My Date With a Vampire anymore (even though they had announced it earlier) because Fox Asia has the rights to that franchise now and have already stated that they intend on remaking their own version of MDWAV in the future (ATV got slapped big time for that “mistake”).
Fantastic Television is pretty much dead (meaning barely anyone even knows they exist, lol) – supposedly they are still filming those “love-themed” series that they’ve been doing since before they launched but they haven’t said much publicly and I honestly don’t think too many people care.
ViuTV has actually been doing pretty well (the World Cup broadcast the past few weeks severely boosted their ratings). They actually just had a press conference announcing a few of their new series being filmed – the big one is the Prequel to their successful Detective Psycho series from last year (the one that starred David Siu and Vincent Wan). This time around, they invited Adam Cheng and Michael Tao to reunite (the last time the 2 of them filmed a series together was The Greed of Man from 25 years ago) and star in the prequel alongside Bryant Mak, Brian Chan, and Neo Yau (the 3 of them will play the younger versions of the 3 main characters from the first season – I think Bryant Mak will play Vincent’s character, Neo will play David’s character, and Brian Chan will play Paul Che’s character). There’s another series ViuTV announced that will consist of a younger cast led by singers Endy Chow and Deep Ng – the series is called Reboot and I still need to read up on the details but it sounds like it will be a super hero-themed series (something along the lines of X-Men, except without all the fancy costumes and CGI and whatnot).
I read some stuff about other web series being filmed as well but don’t have the details on those at the moment. Also still waiting for word on OCTB season 2 (they keep putting up teasers on their Facebook page but have yet to make any formal announcements about cast or filming…argh!). As mentioned in the other article, Stephen Shiu Jr’s company is planning to remake the Japanese classic “Under One Roof” for their hmvod channel (though latest word is that cast is not confirmed yet).
Basically, there are some options out there aside from TVB, for those who are interested – though of course, TVB is still going to dominate because at the end of the day, TVB is still more prolific and easier to access (I read an article today about why TVB continues to go strong despite audiences criticizing their series left and right – a lot of it has to do with ease of access as well as target audiences). Of course, compared to the outside world (meaning outside of HK), the choices aren’t much (and if you are looking for pure HK series with no Mainland investment involved, good luck because there are barely any aside from OCTB and a few of ViuTV’s series).
With Another Era – oh yea, I forgot that Dominic Lam is in it too, but doesn’t sound like his role will be major. I also like most of the veterans in the series, but doubt they will have a whole lot of screen time (the only one whom it looks like might have a meaty role aside from the leads is Pat Poon – he’s good, but not an actor I would necessarily turn the TV on for). Not a fan of any of the main female leads in the series and unfortunately Frankie Lam is hit and miss for me (I liked his HKTV series but much of that was because the scripts for those series were well-written).
@anon Frankie is good as supporting lol I enjoyed his performances in WTAP1, FH1&2, etc.