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Clarence Tsui

As this year’s Hungry Ghost Festival approaches, picture this: you are on the sofa and the television is showing an advertisement. Suddenly, everything goes silent and the screen turns black and white.
Against a backdrop of barely legible calligraphy, a fuzzy, faceless figure inches into view and a scroll unspools from its outstretched arm.
Ring, I heard you scream – and indeed it does bear an uncanny resemblance to the cursed videotape from the seminal 1998 Japanese horror film.
This, however, was actually a break-bumper (a transitional clip from show to advert or vice versa) for Tung Ling, a 1986 supernatural series produced by Hong Kong broadcaster Asia Television Limited (ATV).

Mention ATV and the paranormal in the same breath and My Date with A Vampire will invariably come to mind.
The 1998 series revolved around a decades-long vampiric rivalry between tortured protagonist Fong Tin-yau (Eric Wan Tin-chiu) and his Japanese nemesis (Kenneth Chan Kai-tai), as well as Fong’s proto-Twilight romance with a ghostbuster (Joey Meng Yee-man).

My Date with A Vampire and its two spin-offs/sequels (which aired in 2000 and 2004) have since become cultural touchstones in the history of Hong Kong television, but the series is schlocky stuff when compared to the paranormal serials produced by ATV in the mid-1980s.
Tung Ling – also known as Man, Ghosts & Aliens III – was part of that wave.
The series, revolving around the otherworldly encounters of a copywriter (Frederick Lam Kwok-hung) and his buddy (Tony Yeung Chung-yan) as they try to launch a spooky magazine, unleashed soothsayers, seances and spirit-induced suicides across 20 episodes.
As its English title suggests, Man, Ghosts & Aliens III was the third instalment of what would become one of ATV’s most successful productions at a time when it was starting to lose ground to rival broadcaster TVB.
The franchise, a television successor to the nighttime paranormal programmes that were radio staples for decades, was driven by a stream of scary, spectral yarns.
1984’s Tian Ling (or Man, Ghosts & Aliens I) ended with everyone being transported to outer space by a spaceship – an incredible twist that carried over to the second (and perhaps most outlandish) instalment of the franchise.

The first episode of Ling Gaai Bin Yuen Yan – the other title for 1985’s Man, Ghosts & Aliens II – begins at some point in the past with two aliens (Anthony Wong Chau-sang and Betty Mak Tsui-han) losing control of their spaceship and crash-landing on Earth.
The action then shifts to present-day Hong Kong, where journalist Yeung Sam (Savio Tsang Wai-kuen) finds his camping trip going awry after wartime Japanese ghosts appear.
This maddening mishmash of men, ghosts and aliens happens well before the episode hits the half-hour mark, after which Yeung Sam becomes romantically involved with one of the castaway aliens, battles an evil doppelgänger and attains spiritual enlightenment to become a monk.
Manic and audacious it might be, but the Man, Ghosts & Aliens series was not even the best paranormal product that ATV had to offer. That title belongs to 1985’s Life After Life.

Five actors – Kenny Ho Kar-king (who also appeared in Tian Ling), Tong Chun-chung, Meann Lau Hung-fong, Edith Au Hoi-ling and Bobo Tsui Po-fung – played slightly different incarnations of the same characters in three historical periods – the Ming dynasty, the late 1940s and 1985.
While their social standings differed – one could be a swordsman or a servant in one life and a politician or a police officer in another – the characters ran down the same emotional rabbit holes that eventually led to discontent, death and destruction.
Much more philosophical than your average period drama, Life After Life was an entertaining and engaging exploration of karma and destiny. This was especially true of its final, present-day chapter.
Enlightened by a historian and a monk privy to their past lives in the 1940s, the five protagonists are left to devise a way to fight against what seems to be their preordained demise – a ploy that is as clever and nail-biting as any grand finale of a horror film.


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When paranormal series Life After Life and My Date with a Vampire lit up Hong Kong’s ATV

Publicity for My Date with A Vampire, a paranormal series shown on TV in Hong Kong by broadcaster ATV. It was one of several such series produced by the company. Photo: ATV

Tung Ling (Man, Ghosts & Aliens III) was a supernatural series on ATV. Photo: ATV

A still from My Date with A Vampire. Photo: ATV

Kenny Ho Kar-king in a still from Tian Ling (Man, Ghosts & Aliens I). Photo: ATV

The opening title scene of Tian Ling (Man, Ghosts & Aliens I). Photo: ATV

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Participants on a City Unseen walking tour of Prince Edward. Photo: Joshua Wolper 

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When paranormal series Life After Life and My Date with a Vampire lit up Hong Kong’s ATV

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;}Aliens crash-landing on Earth, wartime Japanese ghosts – Man, Ghosts & Aliens had it all, but wasn’t even the best paranormal series on ATV

Aliens crash-landing on Earth, wartime Japanese ghosts – Man, Ghosts & Aliens had it all, but wasn’t even the best paranormal series on ATV