It is no surprise that Money Magazine (Pearl, 8pm) is focusing on shopping. This week of all weeks is anyone focusing on anything else? Most of us, weary after slogging around the malls and department stores spending huge amounts of money on gifts no one needs, and most of which they probably don't even want, will find it hard to sympathise with the fact that this year, retail business is in a bad way.
No tourists, a chilly wind blowing through the property and stock markets, have taken their toll, and one effect may be that retailers are going to have to make a bit of an effort to sell for once. Some high-class brand names, greedily over-ordered by stores wanting to cash in around handover time, have been reduced to well-publicised cut-price free-for-alls. Others have decided to improve the shopping experience. Money Magazine's reporters show how those who are prepared to spend loads, need not stand in line with the rest of us. Lane Crawford provide a personal service for their richest customers, and shopping guides are also available to choose for you, or organise private in-store shopping trips.
Personalised shopping services are all very well, but how can a stranger make personal gift choices for loved ones? The whole thing is a contradiction in terms. The big receivers at this time of year are and should be children (toy shops experience a 50 per cent leap in business at this time of year). But how meaningful are gifts that have been chosen by somebody else? In California, there are professionals who will organise a present list for busy parents who don't have time to work out what their kids might like. It might sound like an ideal solution to a practical problem, but it is hardly the true spirit of Christmas.
You have to hand it to ATV; first the mini-series Dangerous Ground, which had a plot line which hinged on a secret treaty in which Mao promised to give Hong Kong to Britain in perpetuity, and now a re-run of Noble House (World, 9.30pm), in which the richest and most powerful men in Hong Kong are both British. All this in handover year. One could almost suspect a preference for the old order, except of course that is ridiculous.
Noble House is a lot better than Dangerous Ground (what could be worse) and this is mainly because the story is based on James Clavell's novel, and because Pierce Brosnan plays the lead role, taipan Ian Dunross. Clavell knows how to spin a good yarn, and in this one, Dunross gets a good run as a heroic taipan fighting for business with rival Quillan Gornt on the one hand, and a pushy, ambitious American company on the other.
Brosnan has plenty of support from a dozen or so local and British actors, including the late Denholm Elliot and Gordon Jackson, and John Rhys-Davies as Gornt, a Clavell mini-series veteran who starred as Richard Chamberlain's sidekick in Shogun. And it is great to see Hong Kong and Macau circa 1988, as locations.
