By Kwok Kar Peng
After almost a decade, Mediacorp has returned to Tuas TV World to shoot the new Channel 8 drama Joys Of Life.
Once the jewel in our local dramas, TV World, about the size of four football fields, was the backdrop for memorable shows like Tofu Street, The Price Of Peace and Wok Of Life.
It was created to look like a bustling town of the 1950s and has three main streets that lead to a three-storey cinema, a railway station, a fire station, a city hall, a church, several mansions and rows of Chinese shophouses.
About 10 years ago, the company gave up the area, which is next to the Tuas checkpoint.
Then last month, MediaCorp returned to TV World to film Channel 8’s 30th anniversary period drama, Joys of Life. The series, which stars Chen Liping, Zheng Geping, Rui En, Huang Wenyong, Chew Chor Meng and Taiwanese artistes Alien Huang and Cynthia Wang, will start airing in June.
Costly
So it became financially unwise and costly to maintain TV World.
Since then, some scenes in period dramas were also filmed in MediaCorp’s own backyard in Caldecott, where busy streets were recreated.
Younger artistes like Rui En, 31, have never filmed in TV World before, but her friends remember the place and told her about it.
“My first impression of the place is that it’s very, very cute. I didn’t know it existed until I was told we were to film here,” she told The New Paper.
“I didn’t grow up in this era (1950s), and it’s very foreign (to me). It’s very nice to have a location to help you with the acting.”
Her friends have also shared stories of how the place is haunted, but Rui En said she has never felt uneasy there, even at night.
She plays a tragic character who is forced to marry a stranger to pay off her adoptive father’s debt.
Joys of Life èŠ±æ ·äººé—´ debuts 26 June 2012 9pm on Channel 8.
Source: The New Paper, Asiaone
Categorised in asiaone.com, EN, Joys of Life èŠ±æ ·äººé—´, The New Paper.
