What a view | Hong Kong West Side Stories: Netflix show satirises superficial elements of society
- The 12-part series explores obsessions often characteristic of Hong Kong life: status, wealth, love, lust and loneliness
- Plus, Amazon Prime’s fantasy drama American Gods is a stylish serving of hit and myth
Japan might be the spiritual preserve of quirky television, but if it ever fancies bunking off to a new homeland then Hong Kong satisfies all wacky prerequisites.
Such conditions are guaranteed judging by 12-part Netflix series Hong Kong West Side Stories, a repository of the diversions and obsessions often characteristic of Hong Kong life: status, wealth, love, lust, loneliness, keeping up appearances, swindling one’s way to a fortune, and so on.
Actor-singer Louis Cheung takes first watch in a run of cleverly linked tales, starring in the series opener as “Hong Kong’s most talented pet telepathist” Kelvin, who is out to make money and impress women, in that order. As a compassion-free drinking friend advises him: “The most profitable job in Hong Kong is to con dumb-asses.” But Kelvin – whose other “jobs” are offering betting tips and selling insurance – is expertly humbled and outsmarted by perceptive would-be conquest Yu-ya (Myolie Wu).
The adventures, all with a twist and sprinkled with dry humour, continue through nightclubs, gyms with fake fitness plans, karaoke joints, spas and cramped flats. Never far below the surface are the embarrassment and awkwardness that attend all manner of relationships: between homecoming visitors and their former neighbours; the semi-professional part-time girlfriend and her clients; a security guard posing as a movie director and the woman in a bar whom he’s trying to impress; a naive IT worker crushed by a hopeless crush on a colleague.
They’re the inadvertent stars of these simple morality tales adapted from the online stories of a cult writer going by the name Xiang Xi Murakami Haruki (who was also behind the 2012 Hong Kong film Due West: Our Sex Journey ). The best squirm-inducing moments here are caustic, as Kelvin would confirm: trying to impress the elegant Yu-ya, he watches in horror as she discovers another girl’s discarded underwear in his car. That’s rarely a good look.
No particular “west side” of Hong Kong is unmasked, but nevertheless, the superficial elements of society are liberally satirised. As one of the characters puts it: “Everything is about the packaging.”
