Recently I decided I needed to read a mindless potboiler so I picked up James Clavell's Noble House. It's not great literature but he was a good writer and knew what he was talking about with all his experience as an old Asia hand. I got through 1000+pages and then got weary of a plot that was growing more and more predictable. I hopscotched my way through the last 200 or so pages, just for the record, and to find out if my hunches about the ending were correct. They were. Then I decided to get a cheap copy of the mini-series, and I'm glad it was cheap.
What I didn't realize was that this televised adaptation was a Dino de Laurentis production. What I found upon watching it was an excruciatingly long Asian version of 'Dallas' or 'Knots Landing'. The casting was pretty well done but as good as some of them were they couldn't do anything with the banal dialogue and the foreshortened story line with many characters omitted entirely. This didn't surprise me as any filmed undertaking of such a long involved novel is probably doomed from the start as far as presenting a complete version of the story.
The resulting TV show was like one of those crib books we used to buy in college to get us through tests on books we hadn't read. The skeleton was there, almost, but none of the guts. Another constant irritant was the saccharin and formulaic music of Paul Chihara, which surprised me because he is a fine composer, as a rule. The location shots were repeated over and over and almost none of the glamour and glittering energy of Hong Kong was captured on film. The whole production was more like a grade school travelogue than an adult drama set in one of the most intriguing cities in the world.
However, no expense was spared on the set designs, costumes and automobiles, but the rest was pure Hollywood pabulum. On paper Pierce Brosnan might have seemed a good choice for the Tai- pan, Ian Dunross. In actuality he was far too young. The character in the book was low-key, but intense. Brosnan catches that aspect of Dunross well, but the script is so limiting that he, as good an actor as he is, could do little to create a three-dimensional human being. But he looks sensational and that is what really mattered, I suppose.
Deborah Raffin is very good as K.C. and she has more success in her role. Ben Masters looks the part of Linc Bartlett but is also hobbled by the script. Of the rest there are some very effective, though futile, performances by Gordon Jackson, Dudley Sutton, John Rhys-Davies and Julia Nickson. Tia Carrere's role as Venus Poon is so hacked about that she is simply left with a prop in the form of a toy poodle to haul around, in lieu of any meaningful part in the story, beyond going to bed with several old men and getting squished, presumably, in the final cataclysmic landslide that neatly kills off several of the leading players.
The producers of this sprawling story have reduced it to a boy meets girl love story with an auxiliary boy meets girl love story. They've jettisoned the Tai-pan's wife and kids so that he can be a love interest for K.C. The Russian spy angle is dumped altogether.
Basically, then, what we're left with are several bedroom scenes, very tepid they are too, and a big fire on a restaurant boat, a horse race and a mudslide. It is all very tedious.
This mini-series was a complete waste of time.
What I didn't realize was that this televised adaptation was a Dino de Laurentis production. What I found upon watching it was an excruciatingly long Asian version of 'Dallas' or 'Knots Landing'. The casting was pretty well done but as good as some of them were they couldn't do anything with the banal dialogue and the foreshortened story line with many characters omitted entirely. This didn't surprise me as any filmed undertaking of such a long involved novel is probably doomed from the start as far as presenting a complete version of the story.
The resulting TV show was like one of those crib books we used to buy in college to get us through tests on books we hadn't read. The skeleton was there, almost, but none of the guts. Another constant irritant was the saccharin and formulaic music of Paul Chihara, which surprised me because he is a fine composer, as a rule. The location shots were repeated over and over and almost none of the glamour and glittering energy of Hong Kong was captured on film. The whole production was more like a grade school travelogue than an adult drama set in one of the most intriguing cities in the world.
However, no expense was spared on the set designs, costumes and automobiles, but the rest was pure Hollywood pabulum. On paper Pierce Brosnan might have seemed a good choice for the Tai- pan, Ian Dunross. In actuality he was far too young. The character in the book was low-key, but intense. Brosnan catches that aspect of Dunross well, but the script is so limiting that he, as good an actor as he is, could do little to create a three-dimensional human being. But he looks sensational and that is what really mattered, I suppose.
Deborah Raffin is very good as K.C. and she has more success in her role. Ben Masters looks the part of Linc Bartlett but is also hobbled by the script. Of the rest there are some very effective, though futile, performances by Gordon Jackson, Dudley Sutton, John Rhys-Davies and Julia Nickson. Tia Carrere's role as Venus Poon is so hacked about that she is simply left with a prop in the form of a toy poodle to haul around, in lieu of any meaningful part in the story, beyond going to bed with several old men and getting squished, presumably, in the final cataclysmic landslide that neatly kills off several of the leading players.
The producers of this sprawling story have reduced it to a boy meets girl love story with an auxiliary boy meets girl love story. They've jettisoned the Tai-pan's wife and kids so that he can be a love interest for K.C. The Russian spy angle is dumped altogether.
Basically, then, what we're left with are several bedroom scenes, very tepid they are too, and a big fire on a restaurant boat, a horse race and a mudslide. It is all very tedious.
This mini-series was a complete waste of time.