Raising The Bar (四個女仔三個Bar) is a
television drama series produced by TVB and aired since 26 January, 2015. It
talks about a group of barristers and trainees aim at pursuing justice. These
trainees start working in the chambers after graduation and learn from the
barristers. They handle various, tricky cases and experience failures.
Meanwhile, they meet difficulties in friendship, love and family. In the
following, I would like to review and analyze this TV drama in several aspects.
Firstly, this
TV drama series belongs to hybrid genre which is not solely legal genre, but
also romance. Genre consists of specific systems of expectation which refers to
what audiences expect to see. Moreover, genre provides a framework for the
setting of drama. The framework of this drama surrounds legal and justice
and thus, audiences are expected to see the scenes take place in law court.
Besides, it clearly shows the iconography which involves connotations such as
the costumes and wig that barristers wear. The image of lawyers is the
conventional symbol associated with legal genre. At the beginning of the drama,
it focuses on legal genre and gradually shifts to love story developed between
the trainees in the latter part.
Besides, we
usually stereotyped that men are the professionals and belong to the public
sphere while women are housewives and stay at private sphere. However, this
drama did not adopt this stereotype but it shows women can also be barristers.
This reflects the rising status and tough image of women in contemporary
society. As this promotes gender equality which has become dominant ideology
within society, the drama succeeds in receiving more recognition from the
public, especially from the female.
On the other
hand, there are two different endings for this drama. The original version
relates to demonstration towards upholding Hong Kong’s judicial independence.
As this ending is very sensitive to current socio-political context, it affects
the production of the drama. The decision of changing ending is closely related
to organizational definers that is the culture of organization. We can see that
broadcast company may not want to offend the established power so it adopted
the strategy of de-politicization. The new ending does not involve any
sensitive political messages.
Regarding the
cast, it mainly starred Grace Chan,
Stephanie Ho, Jeannie Chan and Moon Lau who are the rookies of acting. As the
main casts of the drama are not the famous, senior actors or actresses of TVB like
Linda Chung (鍾嘉欣) and Kenneth Ma (馬國明), it becomes more refreshing for the audience. It is believed that
the main target audiences of TVB’s drama series are middle-aged women or the
housewives. Nevertheless, this drama indeed successfully attracted more young
people to watch.
To conclude,
since the story is not limited within the battles between lawyers at the law
court but also emphasizes the process of how trainees become barristers, the
theme is a bit different from the usual legal TV drama series. Moreover,
starring new actors and actresses and highlighting the ability and social
position of contemporary female is a breakthrough. Thus, it is quite successful
in receiving high rating, particularly over 30 points for the last episode.
(542 words)
Student Name: Pang Hoi Ki
Student Number: 10518996 / 21423754
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