UrbanWire

After months of family- and food-focussed drama serials, viewers can finally look forward to something different in the form of Channel 8’s newest drama offering, Room In My Heart.

The show boasts 2 important ingredients for a good serial: The requisite eye-candy, hunky Qi Yu Wu and babelicious Fiona Xie, and a good storyline with multiple twists.

Room In My Heart revolves around the intricate web of relationships surrounding 5 young adults living in Geylang. Zhu Jiankang (Qi Yu Wu), a man stricken with polio as a child, was brought up by cabaret singer Fang Mudan (veteran Taiwanese actress Xia Ling Ling) after being abandoned by his mother. Mudan treats him like her own son while her biological daughter, Cheng Kaixin (Fiona Xie), loves him like her own elder brother. Over time, Jiankang gradually develops more than fraternal feelings for the bubbly Kaixin.

Li Jinsheng (Pierre Png), a carefree drifter and Jiankang’s good friend, also carries a torch for Kaixin, who remains oblivious to the duo’s feelings for her. This tight-knit relationship the childhood trio share becomes even more complicated when orphan Ming Xiaoyan (Belinda Lee) and quintessential gentleman Ding Wenhui (Chen Hanwei) walk into their lives.

“I finally got to play a good guy after so long!” exclaimed Hanwei about his current role at the show’s press conference at the Amara Hotel a week ago. In recent drama serials like Man At Forty, he was cast as villain.

While Hanwei felt relief, Belinda Lee possibly experienced greater pressure in Room In My Heart, since the former MTV VJ modestly claims she never had to say so much in Mandarin. Though she’s more at ease in English, those of us who remember that she used to host Kan Yi Kan [Take a Look] on MTV’s Mandarin channel can’t see this as being a real challenge.

Sharing the same sentiments is fellow English-speaker Pierre who’s cut his teeth on Mandarin serials since 2001 such as In Pursuit Of Peace and the marathon Holland V. Commenting on his difficulties with Mandarin, Pierre said with a grin, “I just hope you’ll understand what I’m saying this time.”

Viewers will have to find that out for themselves. But with a well-balanced cast of fresh faces and stalwart actors, along with an absorbing plot (3 men loving the same girl always makes good television), chances are you’ll be making some Room In My Heart for this 30-parter.