Did I imagine it, was it an 80s thing, or was the old On The Fringe more electric and romantic?

Definitely, the 1988 Channel 8 classic was more focused on its subject of Singaporean juvenile delinquents than the new On The Fringe, which toggles between teenage drama and gangland thriller.

Much has changed in more than two decades, admittedly: hairdos, fashions, habits.

The Centrepoint Kids have made way for the Facebook generation.

But teen crime hasn’t gone away (Google “Downtown East death”, if you have forgotten), and the reboot of On The Fringe is rather timely.

There is a new clique in the new drama, a group of good bad kids who cut classes, hack into other kids’ blogs and filch snacks, and sometimes, adult diapers for someone’s ailing grandpa.

Like I said, they’re good bad kids – as self-absorbed yet well-meaning as regular teens, though less well-behaved – and the drama has flashes of authenticity and fun whenever it is close to them, capturing the camarade-rie and and confidence of young actors such as Edwin Goh and Phua Yida.

Then there is a living, breathing flashback to the old On The Fringe. Li Nanxing, who was a bad boy in the old drama, is now the long-lost, ex-con dad of Goh’s character – and it is kind of fun, too, even when the joke is at the expense of Li’s character (he has never heard of Facebook).

The trouble with the drama is glamorous corporate gangsters (Fann Wong and Zhang Yaodong) who turn up from nowhere, really, to wage a triad turf war and drag in Li’s character.

It’s likely that they have flown in from a Hong Kong crime film, although Fann and Zhang’s accents – floating between Singapore, China and Taiwan – are so disorientating that it’s difficult to be sure.

Whatever their origins, gangsters in suits, to my untutored eye, just don’t seem native to Singapore, or to the sort of naturalistic teenage drama the new On The Fringe could have been.

Groups of men glowering at one another at funerals, fights at steamboat restaurants: Why does the drama dish up warmed-over bits of foreign crime films, when it can tell a Singapore story?

Source: The Straits Times

Categorised in EN, On The Fringe 边缘父子, The Straits Times.