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- Verified Buyer
When this aired back in 1988, I recorded it on the new-fangled VCR we had just gotten. The miniseries aired over four nights and was based on the novel by James Clavell, who also wrote Shogun and Tai Pan. Noble House starred a young, handsome Pierce Brosnan as Ian Dunross, the current "Tai Pan" (Supreme Leader) of Struan & Company, an old and storied Hong Kong-based firm also known at The Noble House.There's a lot the current Tai Pan needs to deal with. He has a potential takeover on his plate at the hands of an American Company named Par-Con, he has to deal with granting ancient "favors" to the bearer of special coins, kidnapping, horse racing, business rivals, Chinese spies and on and on and on. The fun never seems to end.For many years, I would, on occasion, pull out the VHS tapes and play the series, commercials and all (those were kind of fun to watch, honestly) and then in the 2000s, I was considering throwing out the deteriorating tapes but then someone gave me their old Magnavox VHS/DVD writer combo and I got the bright idea to finally transfer the tapes onto DVD. That was okay but the quality was as poor as the source tapes. About a year ago, I watched the DVD and knew it was time to let it go - into the rubbish it went. Then I looked on Amazon just on a lark and there it was. It had been out for a while, in fact, so of course I purchased it and I'm still doing the happy dance. I wish I had known about the DVD sooner.Personally, I love the fact that it takes place in the 1980s as opposed to the 1960s backdrop in which the book was written. But since it was only a 20ish-year difference, it still worked.The cast included other notable names such as John Houseman, John Rhys-Davies (I think he was in the Harry Potter films recently), Ben Masters, Deborah Raffin, Julia Nickson, Tia Carrere and my favorite villain actor of all time – Khigh Dhiegh – who played the evil Wo Fat in the original Hawaii Five-O series and Four Finger Wu in Noble House. But an even bigger villain than Four Finger Wu is Quillan Gornt (played excellently by John Rhys-Davies), the Tai Pan of the Rothwell-Gornt, the sworn enemy of the Noble House.When I first viewed this in the 1980s, it was a drama. But when I view it now almost 30 years later, there's a campiness to it from perhaps the passage of time. There are some very funny scenes that feature Four Finger Wu and his young Mistress, Venus Poon (Tia Carrere), and her little rat dog. There are also some overly melodramatic scenes between Lincoln Bartlett (Ben Masters) and Orlanda Ramos (Julia Nickson) that make me cringe when I view them in modern times – seriously cringe-worthy from a female perspective. Thank heavens for Casey Tcholok (Debra Raffin) for portraying a woman with some power and a mind of her own.The really interesting thing about this series is the portrayal of life in Hong Kong under British rule before it was turned back to the Chinese. That the country would return to Chinese rule in less than a decade is also mentioned a couple of times as it was paramount in the minds of business leaders from the U.K. and in the case of this series, the U.S. (Par-Con).The series managed to balance the many converging story lines that were going on simultaneously (though they all were connected in multiple ways). James Clavell didn't write the script. The book was adapted by screenwriter, Eric Bercovici, who also wrote many episodes of the original Hawaii Five-O series, the miniseries, Shogun and one of my favorite films, A Change of Habit, starring Mary Tyler Moore and Elvis Presley.Just remember, this originally aired in the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" era and it has that feel to it in abundance. The main thing is that despite some goofy 80s moments, this film holds up over time. And that's good writing.
