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What a viewIn Kung Fu remake, Olivia Liang fights Chinatown triads in San Francisco and hunts her teacher’s murderer in Singapore

Olivia Liang leads the cast in revamp of the 1970s TV series, playing a young woman who returns from training at Shaolin Temple to find her family in disarray

On top of that, triads have overrun Chinatown, she has a murder to avenge and to make peace with a gay brother in a series that never takes itself too seriously

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Olivia Liang stars as Nicky Shen in Kung Fu, the revamped version of the 1970s series of the same name.

Published: 9:45am, 27 Feb 2022

The beginning of martial arts-meets-suburban-family-drama Kung Fu is graced by a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it close-up of a grasshopper.

Dues thus paid to David Carradine and the 1970s television series of the same name (whose concept came originally from Bruce Lee), this revamped version (Warner TV; Now TV channel 510) quickly moves on to do its own thing, without completely abandoning certain essential pillars of the first edition.

China’s celebrated Shaolin Temple remains the cradle of all the explosive action that follows. But this time, instead of a wandering hero in the Wild West, we’re in the company of a modern-day, guilt-burdened heroine who returns to her family, having run away three years earlier to join the temple rather than submit to her mother’s marriage plans for her.

On pitching up back in San Francisco, however, independent, newly minted warrior Nicky Shen (Olivia Liang) finds the triads running Chinatown and shaking down her restaurateur father (Tzi Ma) for debts he can’t repay. Harmony Dumplings looks like its goose is cooked.

Nicky Shen (Olivia Liang, left) and Jon Prasida in Kung Fu.

So now Nicky must patch things up with her parents, be a one-woman crime-stopper for the neighbourhood, quit mooning about the boyfriend she dumped when she scarpered to Shaolin and make amends with her gay brother (Jon Prasida), who once depended on her moral support.