UrbanWire

From the sight of medics, army personnel and injured victims carried on stretchers, you might have mistaken this as a typical total defence mock exercise. Not quite, considering When The Time Comes, whose release coincides with Total Defence Day, is a drama about terrorism in Singapore.

This production lines up stars Edmund Chen, Aileen Tan, Phyllis Quek, Zheng Geping, Carole Lin, Huang Yiliang and ex-DJ/actor Dasmond Koh.

Geping plays Ma Zhixian, a retrenched employee who has lost faith in life, slipping into depression and alcoholism, while his exasperated wife, Lizhen (Carole) looks on helplessly.

At a press conference, Carole describes her role in a politically correct manner: "I play a prominent figure as [I'm] a pregnant woman [and this role] answers the government's call of having more babies."

Aileen acts as Wenxuan, an unscrupulous modern career woman and a self-confessed workaholic who doesn't have time for a relationship. She owns an IT company together with Jieren (Edmund). This half-hour mini-series spans 4 weeks, and the cast has enjoyed the production so much that they wish it could have been longer.

Yiliang, who plays Wenxuan's brother, Wenhao, laments in Mandarin, "Usually, I have to put make up during productions but [because of this show], I have to wear even more makeup than usual to make myself look good as I only have a few scenes."

The loud mouth continued his hilarious ranting, "I am so used to playing a bad guy or some God-forsaken person and for once the person lying on the couch drunk in the opening scene was Geping instead of me."

The story unfolds when a building is blown up and Wenxuan is trapped in the rubble. Jieren escapes the building without helping her and Zhixian saves her instead. Phyllis plays Weiwei, a reporter and Jieren's fiancée. More drama ensues after the bombing of the building.

Some time ago, rival station, SPH MediaWorks, Channel u, also had a similar show, Shui Mu Ji Hua, which also depicts terrorism. Between the 2, MediaCorp depicts a more realistic approach because of the more fleshed-out characters in scripting and it also shows likely instances on how terrorists might attack thus teaching the audience how to go about tackling it in times of such uncertainty.

Helped along by Dolby surround sound (thank God for home theatre systems) and special computer effects, this drama seems so real that Singaporeans have no reason not to believe that terrorism can hit our shores anytime.