How Hong Kong-set series The Season depicts the dark side of the city’s high society

From colonial-era red-brick buildings in the shadows of gleaming new skyscrapers to lush hills that roll into the sea, Hong Kong is a city of contrasts. But not all of these juxtapositions are palatable ones. The Season is a six-episode, English-language revenge thriller miniseries that charts the dark undercurrents flowing beneath Hong Kong’s high-society boating scene. The PCCW Media production, shot in Hong Kong between April and June 2025, features an international ensemble cast led primarily by actors of East Asian descent – Jessie Mei Li, Karena Lam Ka-yan and Chris Pang, to name just a few – and is scheduled to launch in June. Those familiar with Hong Kong will hardly be shocked to see the wealthy elite live it up as if money were no object. They may, however, be surprised to see Lam – known for playing sweet characters – playing a relentless socialite. For this role, Lam had to go through the casting process, which was her first time doing so in a while; Hong Kong writers and directors typically already have her in mind for parts these days. She tells the South China Morning Post that she happily accepted the request to audition and found that the process allowed her to do “something completely different from before”. “I thought [going through casting] was really cool. Sometimes it’s very easy to be typecast if you have a prerequisite of a character you’ve done, or you’ve owned a specific character so well over so long that they’re constantly inviting you to do more or less the same,” she says. Lam’s character, Fiona Hext, comes from an old-money family and is “like a falcon” that “nests in a skyscraper watching who to trust and who to speak to”, she says. “Everything is about calculation. If someone comes near her nest, she’s gonna go whoosh. It’s game over.” She likens Hext’s personality to that of characters in the 2009 TVB drama Beyond the Realm of Conscience, in that there is always “a special motive behind the things that she does. You just never know what her truth is.” “She’s spent a whole lifetime building this empire,” Lam adds, “then an outsider comes along, and the ground beneath her starts to move, and she doesn’t like it, because she needs everything exactly how she wants it. I feel like it pulled something out of me that I’d never seen before.” Toby Stephens, who plays Lam’s character’s husband, Christopher, says Fiona Hext is the person “who designs ‘the season’, a series of themed parties that we’ve thrown for years”. Stephens, who played the main villain in the James Bond film Die Another Day (2002), adds that while the ostensible goal of the parties is to raise money for charity, they really serve as places for ambitious socialites to forge connections – invitees vying to get close to the Hexts for personal gain is a big part of the show. Christopher Hext also comes from old money but is “terrified of being the one who fails the family business empire”, Stephens says. “The question is, what is he prepared to do, and how far is he willing to go to save the business and succeed?” Stephens is no stranger to Hong Kong; it is where his New Zealand-born wife grew up, and where his brother-in-law works and lives. But working in the city is a novel experience for the English actor, nevertheless. “Because it’s such a busy place and everybody’s so busy and industrious, I always felt like I was cheating being here as a tourist, just doing a bit of light shopping and eating a lot of delicious Hong Kong food,” he says. “So, to actually come and work with people who are from here and be part of this place – however temporarily – it was a real privilege. I loved working here.” Stephens says that, while Christopher Hext is somewhat similar to the rich “w****r character” he has played before, the character presents new complexities that make for some curious plot points. The real person pushing the plot along, however, is Cola Pierce, played by Jessie Mei Li, who previously starred in the Netflix fantasy series Shadow and Bone. Li describes her character as a newcomer entering the world of finance through meeting the high-society people of Hong Kong. “She has a deep, dark secret and ulterior motive for coming here,” Li says. “She ends up living a double life and eventually having to choose between righting the wrongs of her past, but also making the right decisions for her future. “I would say that Cola does a lot of bad things in the show, but we also kind of root for her – you want her to get her way. But as time goes on through the episodes, you realise she’s really playing a game and manipulating every situation.” Although Pierce does explore “fancy locations”, she does not come from obscene wealth and instead lives in a relatively humble setting. Like Lam, Li plays a conniving character very different from her usual roles. And like Stephens, she has a familial connection to Hong Kong, where her father grew up before moving to England in his teens. “Similar to Cola, I’m half Chinese, half white,” Li says. “It was really interesting for me to experience Hong Kong from [the character’s] perspective. I was excited to feel connected to my heritage and my family’s heritage.” Chris Pang – who made his name in Crazy Rich Asians – plays new-money elite Andrew Fung in The Season. The Australian actor also has an affinity with Hong Kong, and says that watching movies from the city as a child helped him feel connected to his Cantonese roots. “I grew up watching this place. It was so ingrained in my memory and such a big part of my life that coming here to film was really, really special,” he says. “Obviously, Hong Kong is beautiful, and we made it such a big part of the show. It’s a big character, and we really showed [it] off. I think you guys would be happy with how we portrayed Hong Kong.” Pang says that working with a Cantonese-speaking crew was refreshing, and adds that one of his favourite things about shooting The Season was that he got to be “flashy” and drive a Ferrari. Showrunner Yalun Tu – who is ethnically half Chinese and lived in Hong Kong for more than a decade before moving to Los Angeles in 2015 – says Hong Kong’s “unique energy” inspired him to make it the setting of a “glamorous, fun, sexy revenge series”, in which “everyone has a secret and something they are hiding”. He adds: “When I think about Hong Kong and the summer, it’s fun and relaxed, but it’s almost like swans; people are glamorous and beautiful and enjoying it, but underneath, everyone in Hong Kong works so hard to make sure that they can succeed in such a competitive environment. “I knew if I ever had the opportunity to do my own television series, I had to set it here. “The thing about Hong Kong is there are so many juxtapositions. There’s old, there’s new, there’s tradition, there’s modernity, there’s the water – just so many different facets. I thought we could do something that showed the high-gloss world and something that showed a lot of the local Hong Kong.” The Season, which is co-produced by SK Global – the Los Angeles-based production company that made Crazy Rich Asians – and Hong Kong’s PCCW Media, will debut in June on Hulu and Disney+ in the United States, on Now TV in Hong Kong and on the Viu streaming platform in other parts of Asia, the Middle East and South Africa.

How Hong Kong-set series The Season depicts the dark side of the city’s high society

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Jessie Mei Li, Toby Stephens and Karena Lam talk about playing cutthroat wealthy socialites in revenge drama The Season, coming out in June

Jessie Mei Li, Toby Stephens and Karena Lam talk about playing cutthroat wealthy socialites in revenge drama The Season, coming out in June