Based on the maiden novel by infamous Jin Yong, this story was made into a TV series 4 times (that I know of). It was done twice by TVB, in 1970's and 1987. One was a Taiwanese production, another a Mainland production starring Esther Kwan.

With the '87 version I'm covering here, TVB took a great risk of promoting 2 completely new & fresh actors as one of the principal cast. With much skepticism, Nelson Pang and Fiona Leung were selected from an audition to participate in this remake. I don't know what happened to Nelson dude but as for Fiona, you probably know -- the rest is history. She made it big eventually and starred in numerous other series.

Besides Nelson and Fiona, it seems like TVB was really trying to freshen up this production with many young and lesser known actors with potential, such as Jacqueline Law, Lawrence Ng, Dicky Cheung, and even Kitty Lai, who was shot to stardom with her role as Chiu Man (HSDS) in the previous year. I'd say TVB really had an eye for a talent back then. Now that Dicky is an Asian superstar, it's funny to look back and think that he only had a small role here.

Anyway, after writing about Lin Shing Kuet, I said I would not review any other Jin Yong serials. Well I lied. This is one of my favorite series, until it was butchered by Fiona's role in the end, so I decided it was worth a mention. Actually, it's more like a SHRINE!

I think the full translation is "Book and Sword, Gratitude and Revenge." I have no idea what each of those signifies. The only "book" I found when watching the series was Koran. Ehhh.

Well, I wrote a long summary and even longer description for each significant character. So I didn't bother actually doing a separate "thoughts & ops" for this one. Interested in what I thought about the series? Just know that I was ready to break my TV everytime Fiona's stinky princess reared her head into the scene!

This is not to say that I don't like Fiona. Hating her character is different from actually hating HER.

Let you go on with the shrine exploration now. Enjoy. Oh yeah, here's a little something about the 70's version too. Don't forget to visit Wasabi's wonderful homepage on this series here !