The original TVB supernatural drama ‘The Exorcist’s Meter’ which was released three years ago was a surprise hit. The drama captured the heart of many audiences and won couple of awards that year too. Supernatural genre is very uncommon in TVB and such series will usually not perform very well. ‘The Exorcist’s Meter’ broke the norm with its surprisingly meaningful and touching storylines paired with impressive performances by the cast. It offers a very refreshing take / direction on supernatural theme.
Everyone is expecting a sequel and finally it comes out this year. In ‘The Exorcist’s 2nd Meter’, Siu Ma continues his full-time job as a taxi driver while committed to being a skilled demon hunter. He embarks on an adventure to free the spirit of his childhood friend, Ho Zai from a curse by a sea spirit. This 25-episode series starred many returning cast (Kenneth Ma, Hubert Wu, Susan Tse, Ram Chiang, Moon Lau, Mandy Wong, etc) and new ones too (Zoie Tam, Gloria Tang, C Kwan, etc).
There has been a famous saying that there is no other actor who can portray as a taxi driver as real as Kenneth Ma. His award-winning performance in the first series is a memorable one. He continues to do well here but this sequel plays down his role a bit to allocate screen time evenly to all the other supporting roles (a lot more secondary characters to focus on this time).
Although Mandy Wong is the first female lead here, but I felt she is outshined by other female cast (Moon, Susan and even Gloria). There is no important storyline or character development for her. On the other hand, many people seems to like Moon Lau in this series but I am not. I felt her cutesy voice and expression are a bit over. In the episode when she finally leaves the world which is supposed to be very moving, I hardly felt anything. Instead, I actually wish her to leave as quick as possible.
There are a lot of scenes that require huge emotional delivery from Susan Tse and this veteran actress nailed it. The scene where she had to let Siu Ma to kill Ho Zai (both are his sons) in the final episode is so heartbreaking. Besides that, there are also quite a number of tear-jerking scenes in this drama. This is what distinguish this drama franchise from the past supernatural series; touching storylines of which I have highlighted earlier.
Although this sequel is not as good as its predecessor, but it is still a decent sequel. There are some unanswered questions (people may be complaining of several open endings like what did Siu Ma see when he looked to the backseat of his taxi again – same ending in the first series too, no conclusion to Kenneth-Mandy pairing, and who is that mysterious spirit that has the ability to grant life to a person by taking the soul of another, etc) but no worry…the third series will be coming to answer those. There are news saying that this is a 3-part series. Hope that is confirmed.
Out of 10 points, I rate ‘The Exorcist’s 2nd Meter’ a total of 7.7. It doesn’t get beyond 8 point from me because it still has some fair share of slightly disappointing aspects like the character’s development of the sea spirit that is written badly near the end, annoying presence of Moon Lau (she seems okay in first series but not in this), and poor CGIs.
By the way, this series has a very nice sub-theme song sang by Hubert although not quite as compelling as the songs in the first series also.
(Images in this post are from various online sources)