TV.

Lately I’ve been watching quite a bit of TV – every night I’ll try to make it home on time to catch the TV drama “學警狙擊”. The storyline of the drama is quite full of twists and unexpected events (though usually it’s easy to guess these twists and unexpected events for long-time viewers of TVB dramas), and most of the actors and actresses are very good in portraying the characters in the drama. One of such actor that caught my eye is Michael Tse 謝天華, who played the role of “Laughing哥”, a police undercover in the triads.

It has to be said, Michael Tse is actually among my list of favourite actors. He’s good in whatever role that he plays (though most of the time he’s either cast as a triad member or a heartless man who goes round breaking the hearts of the women who love him), and in this series, I think he was really outstanding. Even as a supporting cast, he was great in portraying the life of Laughing, who was caught between the bright side and the dark side. Although the character was made to be killed in last night’s episode (with another 7 episodes to go), it wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that he is the character that garnered the most impression among the viewers. There’s even a few groups on Facebook that are built in his name – that shows you how impressed people were about his acting.

One thing though that set me thinking was more on the TV rather than him. The amount of fanfare around him because of his acting is really something that is fairly astonishing. That shows you how powerful the TV box can be in terms of influencing people. Many have claimed that TV has changed the lives of many people, and I cannot agree more. Some parents have argued against TV, saying that their kids do not want to study hard because they want to watch TV all the time (something that even my own Mum said while I was a kid), and it is a negative influence. But then again, if used in a right way, it can be a very influential tool for positive messages (of course, sometimes you need to have positive people first before you can talk about TV being a useful tool). But I think it is a tool that can have a very positive impact. Even God has used TV as a tool for His messages to be spread around the world, and I hope people will continue to use TV as such a tool, for His grace to reach everyone. May God give us the power and intelligence to use this tool well to serve Him.