TVB Anniversary Awards 2023 Review 丨萬千星輝頒獎典禮 2023 TVB 回顧

Happy New Year Everyone!

We are back with our full review of TVB's Anniversary Awards 2023! We apologize for the delay in getting this post out as we had a very busy week. This memorable night took place on January 8th, 2023 at Grand Lisboa Palace Resort in Macao, a fresh change from the usual TVB City where the show is usually hosted. We will have a separate post sharing our comments for the red carpet fashion this night, so please stay tuned to that upcoming post! Without further ado, here is our review of the awards.

Disclaimer: This post contains purely our opinions after watching the show. The information presented is done according to the best of our knowledge. We would like to apologize in advance for any errors or missing information.

Overall Thoughts

The host of the show was Karl Ting supported by Edmond Hui's narration. It is clear to see that Karl has been getting more opportunities in favour of being TVB's next big siusang. While Karl's performance was acceptable, it was by no means as outstanding as Jarvis Chow's sole emceeing last year. Nevertheless, the focus of the show was evenly distributed to the many familiar faces appeared on the TVB screen again as award presenters. Unsurprisingly, The Queen of News was the big winner of the night, sweeping eight awards. We were happy to say that most award recipients were aligned with the people's choice along with our own preferences. We reckon that is why the regular "Most Popular" awards were discontinued this year since it would be redundant It was really nostalgic to see Moses and Charmaine stand together as winners of the Best Leading Actor and Actress recognition, reminding us of their cooperation in iconic dramas like Beyond the Realm of Conscience, Can't Buy Me Love, and When Heaven Burns. We liked how all award nominees were seated at round tables this year unlike the awkward seating in rows in previous years because it felt like a true party of artistes and crew coming together to celebrate their year of diligence and dedication with the company.

Award Winners

Best Actress in a Supporting Role  最佳女配角: Samantha Ko (高海寧) - The Queen of News《新聞女王》

The first award of the night is for Best Supporting Actress, which we have found a bit early in the night for a more important award. It was presented by Philip Keung and Patrick Tam, who often play supporting roles in numerous HK films themselves. We correctly predicted this win as it felt like the right time for Samantha's recognition in the company after many major roles. In this category, Samantha was a strong contender with her portrayal of Cathy in The Queen of News showing her diverse acting range. She began as the typecasted, usual woman capitalizing on her sex appeal to get ahead but evolved later to a loving daughter of a dementia patient. Of the top 5, in which 3 were from The Queen of News (Regina Ho, Venus Wong, and Samantha Ko) we agree that she was probably the most deserving in that show. Tiffany Lau and Kelly Fu did well in their respective roles but Samantha won in terms of truly grasping the character and living through all the ups and downs. We recognize this is also a product of the script in building out the character of Cathy, compared to less depth in Venus's character.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role 最佳男配角: Jazz Lam (林子善) - The Invisibles《隱形戰隊》

An emotional win and long journey for Jazz Lam at the awards ceremony. There were tough contenders for this award - all of the top 5 were deserving in our opinion. We do have a soft spot for Jazz as he's part of the "Fistful of Stances" family which is one of our favourite TVB dramas! We are happy to have witnessed Jazz grow from a young man usually in comedic roles into a caring family man now alongside many true friendships he found in the company. Very touching to see his "brother" Kenneth supporting him. In terms of his acting, he gave it his all as the crippled "Lui Lui" in The Invisibles. Despite the challenges of losing his leg during a mission, he still put his best foot forward at his new post and acted as the glue to their friend group. Great performance from Jazz, bringing us along his hardships with a positive and infectious attitude. His speech was long, it was funny when he kept acknowledging that he was being cued to get off but kept talking. Mimi Chu was also hilarious making those gestures behind him. Yuen Wah and her were one of the more entertaining award presenters of the night, and we had a good laugh when Mimi displayed a clip of Yuen Wah accidentally tearing her shirt on the game show. We have noticed Jazz become more teary as of late, and according to his interviews, he became more emotional ever since becoming a father. From his live videos, we can tell Jazz is a very heartfelt and grateful person who goes out of his way to express appreciation to the TVB canteen staff and production team members. On the other hand, strong competition from Matthew Ho in Narcotic Heroes as the mute "On Lok" and the memorably comedic performance of Eric Tang as "Fei Yeh" in The Queen of News. 

Best Dressed Male Artiste 最佳衣著男藝人獎: Kenneth Ma (馬國明) 

The iconic Kenneth "O mouth"/dumbfounded face was caught again when he won the best dressed male award! Honestly we don't think he's the best dressed... quite the contrary with the pattern and pink felt peeking through. We have some more details on red carpet looks after the awards commentary.

Best Dressed Female Artiste 最佳衣著女藝人獎: Charmaine Sheh (佘詩曼)

The first award for our TV Queen comes from the fan voted best dressed female! We do agree that she looks particularly elegant and classy.

Most Improved Male Artiste 飛躍進步男藝員:  Mark Ma 馬貫東 - Golden Bowl《黃金萬両》、Narcotic Heroes《破毒強人》、The Queen of News《新聞女王》

A long awaited award for Mark Ma! He has proven to be a great actor throughout the years, especially with the range of characters he got to play this year. He mentioned that he received praise for his impactful portrayal of Slash in The Queen of News despite being a guest feature. We wonder what the original intended portrayal of Slash was and how his portrayal added to the story. We loved how this character added the much-needed depth to Regina's character. Mark is very versatile from playing the unreadable, cunning Du Fei in Narcotic Heroes to various roles we are seeing in the new year in You're Just Not Her and The Spectator. Particularly loved the moment when Pal Sin gave him a brief hug, an ode to his days on Lo and Behold. The top 5 here included Niklas Lam, Jarvis Chow, King Lam/Lam King Ching and Kwan Gor, providing a tight race. Jarvis had the longest list of contributions this year and we actually tuned in to most of it. Lam King Ching has been acting for years and slowly getting meatier roles, looking forward to seeing more of him. He also did a wonderful job in The Queen of News as the police officer. The most improved awards were presented by Moses Chan and Kelly Cheung. Needless to say, they were overjoyed to see their Narcotic Heroes co-star win this award.

Most Improved Female Artiste 飛躍進步女藝員: Tiffany Lau 劉穎鏇 - The Invisibles《隱形戰隊》、Unchained Medley《靈戲逼人》、Lokyi in The Wild《隨懿深度行》

Tiffany has been given many great opportunities in the 7 years since she's joined the industry, in which we've witnessed her growth. She has a popular, healthy image that TVB should rightly promote. It's no secret Jazz Boon's dramas are especially hard to film with the gruelling physical training Tiffany mentioned she had to go through to prepare for her role. We honestly thought she should have won this award last year instead of Rosita. Moving forward we would love to see her in some more diverse roles outside of the young, hot-headed cop or fighter... are we wrong in comparing her to Ron Ng? We are worried that it will take her a while to breakthrough again after receiving this award. Looking at the list of past winners, many have yet to reach the next level of Best Supporting Actress namely Crystal Fung, Kelly Cheung, Mayanne Mak, Priscilla Wong, etc. Our other personal pick would also be Kelly Fu in this category. She is another diverse actress who surprised us with her character Funny in From Hong Kong to Beijing this year! Hopefully she can work towards the BSA category next year. Venus Wong has also been in the industry for 10+ years and at this point we think they should just stop getting nominated for this one. Regina Ho would have been a strong competitor for this, considering her large breakthrough role in The Queen of News. Time will tell with Roxanne Ho, it is still early in our opinion. On another note, it is really sweet to see Moon Lau bursting into tears of joy for Jazz and Tiffany's wins, showing how close the The Invisibles is.

Malaysia's Favourite TVB Actor 馬來西亞最喜愛TVB男主角: Kenneth Ma (馬國明) - The Queen of News《新聞女王》

The Malaysia set of awards were presented by Bowie Woo Fung and Malaysian actress, Lin Min-Chen. No surprise here, Kenneth had a lot of high profile dramas this year and the fans really poured their votes in for him from The Invisibles to Speakers of Law to The Queen of News. We are surprised Ruco did not win this one as he historically has had a large fan base there. Solely judging on fan base here, Kenneth has been regularly onscreen over the years, even if his performances are sometimes boring.

Malaysia's Favourite TVB Actress 馬來西亞最喜愛TVB女主角: Charmaine Sheh (佘詩曼) - The Queen of News《新聞女王》

Again no surprise here from Malaysia's fan vote! Charmaine's first TV Queen award of the night. No matter the fan base or her portrayal of Man Jeh, she had it in the bag. Her comeback proved to be a success, raising up viewership across Greater China.

Malaysia's Favorite TVB Variety Show and Information Program 馬來西亞最喜愛TVB綜藝及資訊節目 : Lokyi in The Wild《隨懿深度行》

We did not watch this. Since the show is filmed Malaysia, we guess it makes sense why it would win. Chris Lai has transitioned to producing and hosting variety shows now, and it seems like the audience prefers him doing this more than acting.

Malaysia's Favourite TVB Drama 馬來西亞最喜愛TVB劇集: The Invisibles《隱形戰隊》

The Malaysian fans have casted their vote for The Invisibles over The Queen of News! It stopped them from having a clean sweep on the three Best Drama awards. It's a bit of a surprise considering their chosen favourite actor and actress, but when we think back to last year, Malaysia also chose I've Got The Power as their favourite drama last year. It does appear that the Malaysia viewers love Jazz Boons' series especially for the thrilling action sequences and ensemble cast here. 

Best Variety Show 最佳綜藝節目: Midlife, Sing & Shine!《中年好聲音》

This was another predicted win. There was really no other variety show this year that generated as much noise and conversation as this singing competition that led up to making a 2nd season almost immediately afterwards. We believe there are two reasons that made this reality competition so popular amongst Hong Kong people: the first being that the competition is open to the general public and the second being the novel idea to allow middle-aged to senior participants compete. Not only did the live-streaming of thousands of applicant auditions on YouTube draw lots of attention, but the touching stories of competitors are inspiring to those who want to pursue their dreams and aren't celebrities. It's not every day you see participants like Uncle Bill in his 70's still chasing his dreams to sing. That being said, the show was not perfect. We weren't huge fans of the regular judges of the show and did not always agree with their comments and scoring.

Best Information Programme 最佳資訊及專題節目: No Poverty Land III - A Vast Expanse《無窮之路Ⅲ—無垠之疆》

An absolutely well deserved award because this was a groundbreaking documentary! This was no doubt the most insightful show this year, in our opinion. It was eye-opening to watch what life is like inside of Xinjiang, including getting to learn about the vibrant cultures and lifestyles of different ethnicities such as that of the Uyghur people. Janis Chan and her production team spent two months driving 14 000 kilometers to show us breathtaking scenery in Xijiang and Xizang. We truly enjoyed the show and hope more informative programmes of this sort will be produced. Both the variety show and information programme awards were presented by Andrew Lam Man Chung and Elena Kong - it's always fun to see what sort of jokes Lam Man Chung brings to the awards ceremony with his unfiltered humour.

Greater Bay Area's Favorite TVB Drama Series 大灣區最喜愛TVB劇集: The Queen of News《新聞女王》

We were hit by waves of reminiscence the whole night reminding us of the good ol' TVB days, and here yet was another one with Gallen Lo and Bowie Lam presenting the Greater Bay area awards. This award was not a surprise to us again. We will talk more about the drama in the Best Series category below.

Greater Bay Area's Favorite TVB Actor 大灣區最喜愛TVB男主角: Bosco Wong (黃宗澤) Mission Run《廉政狙擊》

We predicted that Bosco would win this one as he has a large following in the Greater Bay Area despite the role not being exciting or well publicized. When the voting progress for the Greater Bay Area was posted by some netizens, it was really between Bosco and Kenneth. In comparison, Moses and Ruco has a smaller fanbase in the GBA. Bosco's press interviews after the ceremony were funny, citing that he realized that he forgot to thank Ms. Lok as soon as he sat back down. A juvenile mistake. Loved to see his cameo in The Queen of News, hopefully this means a spinoff or sequel featuring him is in the works! Would enjoy seeing him over Kenneth as the main next time haha.

Greater Bay Area's Favorite TVB Actress 大灣區最喜愛TVB女主角: Charmaine Sheh (佘詩曼)

Charmaine's continued work over the past years in various mainland Chinese projects have paid off.

Greater Bay Area's Favorite TVB Variety Show and Information Program 大灣區最喜愛TVB綜藝及資訊節目: Super Trio Special Series《獎門人感謝祭系列》

Of course Eric Tsang made an award for himself to win... Jokes aside, this show is a classic that we've grown up with and truly represents HK variety. We don't always tune into each episode, but they are entertaining and fun to watch!

TVB Professionalism Award 專業精神獎:  The Scoop Team《東張西望》團隊

The Scoop ratings have been consistently high, and it is an extremely tough job to do the research and for the reporters to be at the forefront of many crises, whether the crew is interviewing victim civilians or uncovering truths that matter to HK citizens. With them demonstrating a high standard or professionalism, we doubt that many people would oppose this outcome.

Best Drama Theme Song 最佳電視歌曲: Gigi Yim (炎明熹) -"Crystal Clear" from The Queen of News《新聞女王》

Gigi's distinct vocals made this song a perfect fit for the lyrics and show, especially for some of the more emotional scenes. It seemed like they tried to make JW a strong contender of the night based on the song that she performed live. However, JW's song was just not really played often in Romeo and His Butterfly Lover and therefore not as memorable, whereas Gigi's show was more popular aiding with the larger listening audience. It was touching to see Gigi on this stage again because the 2020 Anniversary Awards was the first time she appeared onscreen presenting an award. Who would have thought that three years later she would be here to win two awards of the night! We are glad she changed her outfit when she went up to receive the award , and we liked this one much better than her red carpet bold fit. The award was presented by Alan Po and Josie Ho.

Best Male Host 最佳男主持: Jarvis Chow (周奕瑋): EXTRA 《娛樂頭條》 、TVB Awards Presentation 2022 《萬千星輝頒獎典禮2022》、Pok Oi Charity Show《博愛歡樂傳萬家》、Think You Know Kansai?《周遊關西》、Hong Kong Super Pet Model Contest《超級毛特兒大賽》、Long Weekend Getaways《請1日假去旅行》、Community Chest Charity Show《萬眾同心公益金》、Super Travels Limited《日本限定Super遊》、TVB Anniversary Gala Show《萬千星輝賀台慶》

It's great to see Jarvis get recognized for his talent and hard work. Just looking at the amount of shows he hosted this year is telling of how the company values him. As the solo host for last year's award show, he won much praise and deserves the award alone for that performance. We typically do enjoy watching his Japanese travel shows not only because of his fluent Japanese, but also because of his natural and carefree attitude. 

Best Female Host 最佳女主持: Mayanne Mak (麥美恩): Super Trio Special Series《獎門人感謝祭系列》、Long Weekend Getaways《《請1日假去旅行》、Pok Oi Charity Show《博愛歡樂傳萬家》、Gala Spectacular《星光熠熠耀保良》、TVB Sales Expo 2024《TVB繼續創新節目巡禮2024》、TVB Anniversary Gala Show《萬千星輝賀台慶》

Mayanne has proved her hosting abilities over the years and been quite favoured by management to provide her with acting opportunities as well. She is climbing the ranks to one of the top indispensable female hosts at TVB with eloquence and proficiency in several languages. It's pretty much given that she will be part of any big TVB shows like the Anniversary Gala or charity shows. The hosting awards were presented by the《蝦仔爹哋》comedic trio of Lo Hoi Pang, Jaime Chik, and Louie Castro.

Lifetime Achievement Award 萬千光輝演藝大獎: Keith Yuen Chi Wai (袁志偉)

This year's awards have a lot to do with the theme of news. The award rightfully goes to Yuen Chi Wai, who has been a reporter and news anchor since 1977, and his dedication can be witnessed with the fact he is still working in an administrative position with the news department at TVB.

Most Promising Newcomer 最具潛質新人: Yumi Chung (鍾柔美)、Kayan Yau (游嘉欣)、Archie Sin 冼靖峰、Kelly Gu 古佩玲、Gigi Yim (炎明熹)

Dubbed as a "pork award" for newbies, Stars Academy S1 artists took the majority of the 5 awards home. Depite Gigi having focused efforts on singing with smaller participation in hosting, acting, dancing, etc., she managed to snag an award which is well-deserved. She is one of the first ones that comes to mind when thinking about newcomers with the most potential! We are glad Yumi won this award and are eagerly awaiting more songs from her. Nothing for Chantel or Windy, to which some fans seemed surprised about, nor Sherman who has been quite active in hosting various shows this past year. Only one male winner in this category - not surprisingly, it went to Archie Sin with his participation in Asia Super Young and J Music. This is a good group of high potential artists. We have enjoyed Kelly Gu's performance mainly in Lo & Behold. We aren't really fans of Kayan Yau's acting or hosting honestly, but we can see why she is being promoted since they do need some more young actresses.

Best Actor in a Leading Role 最佳男主角: Moses Chan (陳豪) - Narcotic Heroes《破毒強人》

The competition for Best Actor was really only between Moses and Kenneth this year and in terms of acting, we agree that Moses had the upper-hand. His portrayal of Man Wah was refreshing with his hoarse voice also playing a terminally ill patient, even if we had our doubts watching the trailer at first. He committed to his character and allowed us to see another side of Moses besides the comedic, high pitched English he's been pulling with recent characters. The breakthrough character reminded us why Moses continues to be regarded with top status within the company throughout the span of decades. This year was extra special for Moses because what a better way to receive a company's highest distinction than to have it presented by his wife, Aimee! Because Moses and Aimee both received individual nominations for their roles in Romeo and His Butterfly Lover, it was a perfect excuse for the couple to spend this meaningful night together. What a heartfelt moment for the wives to present this award, they should have invited Joel's wife too, and it was awkward when they accidentally said Joel had no wife! Although a tad awkward/silly that the wives are presenting an award without being renowned actresses themselves... only at TVB. 

Best Actress in a Leading Role 最佳女主角: Charmaine Sheh (佘詩曼) - The Queen of News《新聞女王》

Our Best Actress pick of the night by far! She nailed every scene, from the young flashbacks of her starting out in the industry to the later retirement scenes bowing out to leave the world of news behind her. We were captivated by Man Jeh's work ethic, relentless drive and the grey area of her professionalism. She led the whole cast and crew with confidence and grace, and it was a great gift to see her back on the small screen. Looking back at the last few years of Best Actress winners, we can confidently say Charmaine would have easily won in any of those years— this is how magnetic her acting is. It was also perfect how Raymond Lam and Tavia Yeung were the presenters as former co-stars and seemed even more excited than Charmaine on her win! Our only comment that we've heard around is that it is unfortunate Selena Lee left empty handed once again despite her best efforts in previous years for Barrack O'Karma and now as the 2nd female lead for The Queen of News. Although it is fair to say that fans globally would've voted for Charmaine, and there was no rigging of the Malaysia and Greater Bay awards. She is truly worthy of the title of Triple TV Queen with three Best Actress awards tonight as well as this being the third time she has won this high award at TVB previously in 2006 and 2014.

Best Drama Series 最佳劇集: The Queen of News《新聞女王》

Everything that night seemed to revolve around Charmaine that night with the clever setup of her blowing the whistle after she won her Best Actress trophy to call on Julian (Chilam) Cheung as the final award presenter of the night like her character did in the classic series, Return of the Cuckoo. The last award of the night goes to The Queen of News! A great ensemble cast of unique women vying to be the queen of news that was a modern twist of the palace scheming seen in costume dramas. Each episode and case was gripping, leaving us to watch the next episode right after. We saw a bit of The Morning Show, which this script is loosely based on and inspired by. There are some similarities with the female/male co-anchors that are long-time coworkers, a #MeToo movement against the male anchor, a reporter who only cares about the truth despite upsetting people, etc. However, we found that The Queen of News was more dramatic and added various characters to tell their own exciting story inspired by some local news events too. The acting was top notch in this drama, especially coming from Charmaine, Selena, and Samantha. The weaker link here is Kenneth Ma as George, who did not seem quite evil enough and a bit less exciting compared to the "queens" who were the focus of the series. To play devil's advocate, maybe that was the point... he was an incapable leader. Regina had a large role to play here, coincidentally as the next "Man Jeh" of SNK News and also the next "Kwan Ho" in Return of the Cuckoo. We are looking forward to some more well-written and well acted dramas this year!

Performances

We certainly did not complain about seeing noticeably more performances this year compared to before. This was a funny opening skit done by Karl, paying homage to the TVB dramas that aired this year. It was also great to see a new batch of fresh faces perform the Asia Super Young theme song because TVB has been lacking male idols who can sing and dance. It's looking much more promising now with lots of young and older talent to be cultivated from the various music competitions the company is investing in. Eric Tsang has openly praised the trifecta of reality shows at TVB including Stars Academy, Midlife, Sing and Shine!, and Asia Super Young, which covers almost all age groups in the making of a new generation of idols and stars. Here were the performances of the night:

 

Missing the Crystal Clear performance which was not posted by TVB's YouTube channel.

Thank you for reading our comments of this year's Awards Presentation! Again, we will be sharing our red carpet review for the show in our next post, so please look forward to that. Wishing you all the best until then! 

- CeeJay

References

https://www.youtube.com/@tvbofficial

https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hant/%E8%90%AC%E5%8D%83%E6%98%9F%E8%BC%9D%E9%A0%92%E7%8D%8E%E5%85%B8%E7%A6%AE2023

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TVB_Anniversary_Awards

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202311/1301901.shtml

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