Producer Tsui Yu On predicts that Raymond Lam and Fala Chen will be most successful

TVB producer Tsui Yu On has been active in the television industry for more than 30 years and has produced many popular series. His expertise is in producing sitcoms that are well-received by the general audiences and is often credited with resurrecting the career of Nancy Sit. In terms of the current generation ‘siu sangs’ and ‘fa dans’, producer Tsui predicts that Raymond Lam and Fala Chen will be most successful.

Tsui Yu On started his career as a video engineer at TVB in the 1970s – in his position, he was pretty much the ‘right-hand man’ for the directors and therefore started to become interested in television series production. Under the encouragement of producer Catherine Tsang, Tsui changed career paths and became assistant director. In 1988, he left TVB and went to Singapore, where he was able to refine his skills and eventually became a producer. In 1993, he returned to TVB and since then, has produced many popular series that have garnered much public accolade, such as "Happy Harmony", "A Kindred Spirit", "Return of the Cuckoo", "Virtues of Harmony", and more recently, the new sitcom "Some Day". Amongst these, the series "A Kindred Spirit" and "Virtues of Harmony" became huge hits and set high ratings records for sitcoms.

Among the many series that Tsui Yu On produced, "A Kindred Spirit" is the one that has been most memorable for him. The collaboration of Louise Lee and Nancy Sit was a huge success and the duo became an unexpected ‘dream team.’ Tsui says: “A Kindred Spirit" originally aired in the ‘golden’ timeslot, however due to the ratings not being too good at first, we had thought about cutting the series at the 89th episode. In the end, the company decided to move the series to the late night (11pm) timeslot; this proved to be a good thing for the series, as the timeslot attracted a lot of ‘late night’ audiences – those who worked late and would get home just in time to tune in. The average ratings for the series went from 18 points [in the ‘golden’ timeslot] to 28 points [in the late night timeslot], which was a huge encouragement for the entire cast and crew.”

Speaking of "A Kindred Spirit", Tsui was asked why he decided to invite Nancy Sit (who had already retired from the industry) to return to the industry and film this series. Tsui replied: “I read in a magazine that Nancy had plans to come out of retirement and return to do some acting work in the industry, plus up to that point, I was not able to find a suitable artist to play the role of ‘Auntie Ho’, so I decided to ask her if she was interested.” "A Kindred Spirit" was instrumental in resurrecting Nancy Sit’s career in the 1990s and later on, in the 2000s, her career reached its peak with the vastly popular sitcom "Virtues of Harmony" (both the costume version as well as the modern day spinoff).

Tsui Yu On also likes to utilize newer generation artists in his series – amongst them, Louis Koo, Bernice Liu, and Linda Chung have been most successful in his sitcoms: “Back in the 90s when Louis Koo was cast in "Happy Harmony", I already felt he had potential, however his looks were too ‘boyish’. Later on, when he changed his image and became more tanned, he saw instant success and is now a very cool, handsome guy.”

As for the current generation of TVB ‘siu sangs’ and ‘fa dans’, Tsui Yu On feels that Raymond Lam and Fala Chen have the most potential: “I feel that Raymond possesses all the qualities that a ‘siu sang’ should have, such as good looks, closeness with the audience, and most importantly, solid acting. In terms of ‘fa dans’, I admire Fala because I feel that she has natural acting talent – you only need to explain things to her once and she gets it right away.”

Source: Oriental Daily
Translation: llwy12 @ AsianFanatics