TV Series Review: Reaching For The Stars (真命天女) (Rating: 8/10)
Starring
Selina Ren as Zhou Xin Lei (周心蕾)
Hebe Tian as Shen Xiao Rou (沈孝柔)
Ella Chen as Ren Jie (任潔)
Chen Zhi Kai as Xiao Ya Wei (蕭亞為)
Guo Yan Yun as Liang Zheng Hao (梁正浩)
Di Zhi Jie as Chen Kai (陳凱)
Lin Wei as Liu Shi Qiang (劉世強)
Overview
The Taiwanese girl-band S.H.E. (Selina, Hebe, Ella) come together in this TV series and put their acting skills to the test as all three members of the band play the main characters. Unlike the previous TV series "The Rose" in which only Ella played the main character (with Selina and Hebe playing small side characters), "Reaching For The Stars" focuses on the stories of all three.
In "Reaching For The Stars", the three girls share the same birthday and were born in the same year. Each of the three girls play uniquely different characters, each from a different social status.
Selina plays Zhou Xin Lei (周心蕾), the daughter of a wealthy business man, lives in a big house with servants and is the spokeswoman for the company her father owns.
Hebe plays Shen Xiao Rou (沈孝柔), a determined, hard-headed policewoman who cares for her ailing grandmother and takes real pride in her work.
Ella plays Ren Jie (任潔), a hard worker trying to hold three different jobs at the same time to try to pay off hospital bills for her very sick younger brother. She hardly has enough to pay for rent when she is kicked out of her apartment and forced to live on the street.
"Reaching For The Stars" opens up with the three reflecting upon their lives on their birthday and with how unhappy each of the three girls are about their lives. As luck would have it, these three happen to come across each other on their birthday and befriend each other. All three make a promise to meet at the same place and the same time next year on their birthday.
Little do they know it, but from that point on, all three will have their lives intertwined with each other, for better or for worse. Will the three girls meet up together again on their birthday in one years time?
Review
This TV series has 22 episodes with each episode lasting about 40 minutes. Unlike some of the other TV series I have watched, I feel that the length of each episode in "Reaching For The Stars" is just the right length and it does not feel as though you have to dedicate an entire night just to watch one episode.
The series keeps you interested and it never does feel like it's dragging it's feet. Like any good TV series, the ending of each episode had you wanting to watch the next episode just to see what happens next.
The opening and ending theme songs were pretty good and the music throughout the TV series was great and had me seriously looking for the soundtrack (however I had a hard time finding it!).
One of the problems I had was that the sound wasn't particularly great. Sometimes the background noises would drown out what was being said by the characters. I found it annoying that sometimes when two characters were having a conversation, the noises can be heard on one camera angle, but then when it moves to another camera angle, the noise is gone! When they come back to the original angle, the noise comes back! Maybe it's the way it's made in Taiwan (because this seems to always happen in all the TV series I have seen).
If you've seen the other TV series that S.H.E. starred in called "The Rose", then you know that Ella did a fantastic job acting in that series. When you watched "The Rose", you could actually feel what Ella was feeling (yes! she really did that good of a job!), but in "Reaching For The Stars", I didn't get that same feeling from her or any of the other girls.
In fact, sometimes I felt like wincing whenever one of the girls were in an emotional scene. I can maybe understand it if it were Selina or Hebe (both never really played a big role in "The Rose"), but I really expected more out of Ella. I'd say that about 50% of the time she was in "The Rose" she had to play it emotionally, and I had really high expectations from her in "Reaching for the Stars".
Aside from some plot holes and maybe some overacting from some of the other supporting characters, I felt the story somewhat captivating. However, I will say this: when the final episode ended, I felt a little sad that it was over and I was kind of wishing there was more or a follow-up series (like any good TV series should make you feel).
Unfortunately the boxed DVD set had no English subtitles (only Chinese subtitles).
Luckily I found a great S.H.E. fansite that had an episode guide that reviewed what happened scene by scene. You can find the episode guide and information about S.H.E. at the S.H.E. Angelic Fansite. You'll have to create an account (it's free) in order to access the Forums. The only thing about the episode guide is that it is only a summary of what happens in each scene - as a result, you may get a one-sentence summary that describes a 10-minute scene.
After I had finished watching "Reaching For The Star", I found it on YouTube WITH English subtitles! Apparently there is a group of fans out there that actually manually translated and subtitled the whole series!
Perhaps I will one day watched the subtitled version which I will hope will greatly help in my learning of Mandarin.
This TV series came highly recommended by my wife's cousin and I'd say I was not disappointed at all. Granted I like anything from S.H.E., I did have some expectations, especially after watching "The Rose". Aside from some spotty acting and some annoying noises in the background, I give this a thumbs up and a rating of 8 out of 10.
