ICAC Investigators 2024 (2024)

Best TVB ICAC drama yet, but that's not saying much

Every year, TVB does a short ICAC series to discourage people from doing any dirty money laundering. I understand the need for this, but at the same time almost every year the short ICAC series have been awful. Do you remember the last few years of these? Nope. Because they all sucked.

However, this year there has been a sudden jump in quality. The actors are more compelling to watch and we actually do care a little bit for the characters we're watching, like Kelly Cheung being pregnant but also head of the ICAC department. The first episode even threw in Kent Cheng, who was great to watch being this greedy villain. He sold it really well and I thought the entire 5 episodes would be ICAC trying to nail him and him avoiding all ICAC assaults until the very last episode. When Joel Chan secretly confronted Kent and Kent got suspicious, that scene got tense. It made for some great drama right at the start.

But sadly, it fell apart so soon. Instead of a 5 episode cat and mouse game with Kent and the ICAC department, it did the classic monster-of-the-week sort of deal where each episode was it's own case, and the cases all ended without a satisfying conclusion, instead slapping onscreen text explaining what happened next. The classic rule for good story telling is SHOW, NOT TELL! When the ICAC made a move to arrest Kent Cheng at the end of the 1st episode, it doesn't show us what happened and just cuts to the text. Talk about giving the viewers blue balls! The other cases after episode 1 were all not as good and I have already forgotten them all.

This is not the worst part. Man, the music is still terrible. They took the classic ICAC theme music and remixed it but it still sounds awful. I think it is about time for an update TVB. Change it! And my gosh the character played by Yvette Chan was so annoying, just pure naïveté and stupidity that just got on my nerves. For all 5 episodes.

Overall, the quality is much better than previous years but there is still huge room for improvement.

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