Despite its expensive production and big cast, Beauty at War <金枝慾孽貳> has become one of TVB’s most poorly rated series in the past few years. Last week, ratings continued to only average 19 points, becoming the first drama in a long time to crash below an average of 20 ratings points. Monday night’s episode also received ratings of 19 points, with approximately 1.21 million viewers tuning in. Compared to last Monday’s ratings of 22 points, the series lost another 190, 000 viewers. What Went Wrong? War and Beauty received a minor boost in ratings of 23 points last Tuesday. However, in last Wednesday’s episode where Ada Choi (蔡少芬) lost her three children to the plague, the ratings again plunged to 18 points. Ada’s husband tried to keep the children’s deaths from her. The numerous perplexities of whether to tell her about the deaths of her children and why she should be kept in the dark took up the whole episode, leading to disgruntlement among viewers with the slow-moving plot. Fortunately, Ada’s outstanding performance in episode 19 helped the ratings to go up again last Thursday. In that episode, Ada displayed great acting skills when she cried from the beginning until the end of the episode. Having known that her three children have already died, Ada adeptly her grief throughout the episode. After the airing of the episode, Ada received praises from both her colleagues and netizens who said that the performance was deserving of the TV Queen title. That episode earned a rating of 20 points. Will Not be Axed In spite of its low ratings, it is unlikely that Beauty at War will be axed. TVB Deputy Director of External Affairs, Tsang Sing Ming (曾醒明) said, “In recent years, no drama in the prime time slots has plunged below an average of 20 points. Since Beauty at War is ending soon, it will not be cut nor will there be changes made to it. We will do our best.” Creds: Apple Daily
It really sucks knowing that there are great actors in the show. I gave this a try but i gave up. Hope they still come back to tvb. But apparently they used another technique to do the rating for this show and Bullet Brain
I actually like this drama very much. The cast is really good. And everyone plays their own role really good. So, I don't think that the producer by using traditional Chinese sentences could be a big problem in China. (for overseas Chinese people, I might can understand this.) But I am also not living in China, but in EU, since I was a little child. Beside, look at the mainland drama (後宮甄嬛傳), which was really really popular. They also use a lot of traditional manners, sentences and poems. People have to take some time to understand movies, dramas and books. When you use more time, you might be understand more and understand the underlying ideas. Some easy books, movies and dramas is probably easy to follow, and will be sells very well! But that doesn't mean that those stuff is good stuff. And this kind of easy stuff will makes people sometime silly (/brainless). Using more time, and using internet to understand more (like research) will bring more information. And your horizon might be broaden. So let the people who want to enjoy this drama, enjoy it. And let people who doesn't like it, watching something else. And stop making a big problem around the ratings in Hong Kong. Only the Si lai's in Hong Kong would like to watch rubbish television dramas and shows.
