It is true that today is a different world - no longer do we gather together as a family to watch one TV, one TV show. No longer is 8 pm or 9 pm or even 10 pm THE time to sit down and watch TV.
We are too busy - just back from work (which is no longer 9-to-five), just back from dinner, just back from picking the kids from school CCA; busy doing housework after office work; busy picking up the toddlers and babies from nannies or grandparents; busy after a long l o n g drive home in traffic heavy despite COE and ERP ... Just B U S Y.
And when we have to sit down, TV's not the only leisure pastime nowadays. For the men, those young enough to have grown up in their teen or varsity years playing computer games, it may be time to enter the gaming world, join hands with their buddies to fight evil in the (virtual) world. For the teens, it is to de-stress, after a hard days' schoolwork and homework.
Where got time to watch TV? Much less local TV? There's tough competition for the TV eyeballs - what with AXN, Discovery, the HK channels etc on cable TV. If it's not Frasier, Prison Break, CSI or House, then it may be Korean dramas for others (like the huge following for Da Chang Jing, a while ago).
If we want to bring everyone together, we need a compelling TV drama series, with the right combination of attraction like the dramas of the past had, eg The Awakening, the Holland V drama series, Under One Roof and PCK. Nowadays, there are just too many makansutra-type TV programmes, too many reality TV programmes, too many American Idol wannable programmes with sms-offerings out to get our money!
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IS THERE LAUGH AFTER PCK?
TODAY Weekend • February 3, 2007
Juliana June Rasul juliana.rasul@mediacorp.com.sg
A long, long time ago in the southern province of China (er, ok, an independent republic much, much further south called Singapore) there existed a little TV show called Under One Roof.
It was the kind of sitcom that people rushed home on Tuesdays to catch — and would talk about the next day at work. They made room in their own families for five more: Ah Teck, Dolly, Ronnie, Paul and Denise.
Other sitcoms tried to copy the template. No one smiled – until an oddball contractor with his curls and mole brought down the house. That show, too, is now ending.
Phua Chu Kang hangs up his boots for good this Sunday, after eight seasons.
Actor Lim Kay Siu, who plays villainous contractor Frankie Foo on Phua Chu Kang Pte Ltd (PCK), says the finale will probably prompt "mixed feelings". "Some people will say: 'It's about time, we're running out of ideas', and some people will say: 'Oh no, our favourite character is going away forever'," he said.
Will he take the laughs with him, leaving us with more pale imitations? What made this Ah Beng tick, anyway? Take out your pencils ... ACCIDENTAL ICON PCK happened by accident, as all good things — even penicillin — came about. He was dreamt up by Gurmit himself, Andrea Teo and a couple of other writers to fill in a missing character on Channel 5's sketch comedy show Gurmit's World. That was the first time that audiences heard the lines, 'use your blain, use your blain!' Channel 5 did — and created a spin-off series.
"It was a case of right character, right time," said Teo. "It was so edgy, and at that time, everyone and their dog was renovating their house, so everyone had a contractor story to tell."
Viewers loved the idea of a beng contractor prancing around on local TV, dealing with an ice kachang-making mother (Neo Swee Lin), his atas brother and sister-in-law Phua Chu Beng (Pierre Png) and Margaret (Tan Kheng Hua), and a bunch of goons as his labourers, Ah Goon and King Kong (Ray Kuan and Charlie Tan).
"He went down well because he was a caricature," said local funnyman Hossan Leong. Edgy. Accessible in his HDB setting. And yet, a caricature. The pointers are falling in place.
But edgy, irreverent shows in Singapore must walk a fine line. The Ra Ra Show in 1993, hosted by the always-impudent Kumar, had its following but also attracted its share of complaints. Viewers grumbled there was too much Singlish (a favourite complaint, as the cast of PCK would find out later), and the material was too risque. "Singaporeans are so scared to hear characters speak like ourselves," said Seah Chang Un, who was part of the team behind Under One Roof and also served as one of PCK's writers. The Ra Ra Show was taken off screens in 1994 and supplanted by a different brand of humour — Tan Ah Teck and family made their debut that same year.
CUT, PASTE, COPY
The benign, bumbling, long-winded dad and his brood were an immediate hit — but this created another pitfall that many of its successors fell into. Imitation, without novelty or depth. "It was the fact that Under One Roof became a hit that made the programmers want more shows like that," said Tan Wei Lyn, who has written for the show, as well as for PCK. "So, it ended up being just family comedies and more family comedies."
But family comedies — or sitcoms for that matter — will not click simply because of the genre. Daddy's Girls have come and gone while Happy Belly did not leave us sated. Living With Lydia and Police and Thief feature big families, and top comic chops from Hong Kong's Lydia Lum and Channel 8 comedian Mark Lee — but neither has left the imprint of PCK or Under One Roof.
So, what gives?
"There are so few local characters on television that Singaporeans know were created from scratch and have really lasted," said actress Tan Kheng Hua. "Phua Chu Kang has been able to speak the thoughts of the hearts of Singaporeans in a very accessible way, to get Singaporeans to watch what is lovable and what is ugly about themselves."
Under One Rood invented the formula. "It fit the Singaporean mindset in the mid-90s exactly," said Teo. "It was relevant, because of the HDB setting, but it was also aspirational, in the sense that you had the family living in a flat in Bishan, which was then the hot area to stay. You also had the very smart, graduate daughter. It reflected what Singaporeans were, and wanted to be at the same time."
PCK's peerless crassness built on the Under One Roof formula and gave it an extra zing. Wannabes that tried to ride on their coat-tails fell by the wayside. These included rush jobs that even their writers were not proud off. "Some writers would rather use pseudonyms than have people know that they wrote that," said Tan Wei Lyn.
Far from wanting copies, audiences constantly want something new. And now they are looking for more than cheap laughs, says sitcom queen Daisy Irani,.
The first offering coming their way is Channel 5's Parental Guidance — which is not a sitcom at all, but rather a light-hearted drama. "It's nice to be able to promote something I'm proud of," said actor Adrian Pang, punctuating the remark with a cheeky arched eyebrow. And in August there is Michael Chiang's Army Daze, with its fool-proof Singaporean unique selling proposition — the good old NS story.
They are different — and that is their strength. "If we don't embrace newer ideas, we'll be stuck with family sitcoms and shows about hawker food forever," said Seah.
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