When Heaven Burns 天與地

Starring
Bowie Lam
Moses Chan
Charmaine Sheh
Maggie Shiu
Kenny Wong
Elaine Jin
Chan Hung-lit
Queenie Chu

Synopsis
In their youth Joe (Bowie Lam), Angus (Moses Chan), Ronnie (Kenny Wong) and Ka Ming are good friends and band mates. During a mountaineering trip, the four are stranded on a snow bound mountain and out of desperation Ka Ming is killed and eaten by the other three. This event has a traumatic effect on them, their friendship, and their friendship with Yan (Charmaine Sheh), Ka Ming's girl friend, leading the previously close group to go their separate ways.

Eighteen years later, Yan remains haunted by the memory of Ka Ming, trying to regain what she had with him in part with her husband and and in part with her lover, but finding neither a complete replacement for her lost love breaks with them both. Troubled she loses track of time while alone in the wilderness, sparking a missing persons alert which becomes the catalyst for the four friends to meet again. Though she was Ka Ming's girlfriend all four band mates were in love with her and the three survivors remain in love with her.

In the intervening years Joe, who of the friends had been the most driven by the desire for wealth and fame, has tried to make amends by attempting to be a good person, giving up a promising accounting career and forgoing material gain to become a resolute champion of worker's rights. This has led to the admiration of his co-workers but an estrangment with his wife Gina (Asrid Chan), that although the two remain affectionate for each other, their lives drift along on courses that seldom touch or cross. To further his promotion of worker's rights he decides to stand for Hong Kong's Legislative Council.

Angus, who of the friends was the least driven by wealth and who lived for his music, has become selfish, brutish and avaricious. The events of the mountain has taught him the lesson that even the best of friends will turn on each other to survive, and to survive one has to have the power and means to protect oneself. By using others through seduction and violence Angus has enriched himself his latest target being to marry the wealthy Emma (Maggie Siu).

Suffering from selective amnesia, Ronnie is unable to remember the mountaineering trip, and mentally and socially is the healthiest of the friends, unlike the others he has managed to maintain a healthy family life with his wife Shirley (Angela Tong) and his two children. Out of nostalgia of their past friendship he strives to bring the friends back together. This he achieves by recalling a lost song written by Ka Ming just before his death, although he had strove to do so for eighteen years he is only able to finally do so after encountering Yan again.

Hearing the song again rekindles the groups friendship and unknown to the others and himself saves Joe's life. On opposite sides of a labour dispute, Joe's actions spoil one of Angus' plans and in a rage Angus instructs his triad connections to take care of Joe. For a time the friends learn to live with the past, their friendship a refuge from the realities of their lives, their shared history allowing them to put away the masks and armour of everyday life when together.

Whilst protecting Yan from a mugger Ronnie is stabbed, causing him to remember the events on the mountain. His subsequent arrest for a fatal accident causes him to confess to the police leading the police to suspect that remains previously discovered on the mountain are Ka Ming's. Intent on going to prison to pay for his crimes and unwilling to protect himself, Angus and Joe become desperate to have Ronnie acquitted in part out of friendship and in part out of self preservation. Joe succeeds by convincing Emma's sister Brenda (Elaine Jin) to use her connections on Ronnie's behalf, with the bargaining chip that he knows how to fulfill her desire that Angus split with Emma. Joe reveals that the only person that Angus has ever truly loved is Yan, and in order to protect Yan from harm Angus is willing to give up the wealth and power he has worked to accumulate. The revelation of the true circumstances of Ka Ming's death and the machinations of Angus and Joe drives the friends apart again.

Angus, Joe and the free spirited Yan all suffer from a crisis of identity. Defeated in the LegCo elections, possibly through electoral fraud, Joe considers that the path he has chosen of righteousness and service to others has been rejected by a public that would rather hear platitudes and lies rather than truth and justice. He is given the opportunity to replace Angus in Brenda and Emma's financial investment company and does so, driven by the desire to make up for lost time, is determined to be as ruthless as Angus has been.

Yan is unable to forgive the others for Ka Ming's death, in a rage she stabs Angus but cannot bring herself to allow him to die. Unable to condemn her friends to prison by conclusively identifying the remains as Ka Mings, she tries to escape by drinking and when this fails by travelling. When she returns she is a changed person, unable to trust other people and a radio DJ she forgoes her independent and artistic programming for the mainstream and commercial that she loathes.

Freed from his material desires Angus becomes a musician again, playing guitar in a bar for free drinks and change.

Brenda discovers that she has cancer and faced with the possibility of death realises that she has spent a lifetime in the service of money, that she has never been able to take the time to truly live, love or be herself. She makes a bargain with Joe to buy his time to live a few days of normal life, however instead of cancer Brenda dies in a car crash. Brenda's death leaves Angus and Joe on a collision course as both vie to control the fortune left to Emma, Joe through being left in control of the sister's business' and being in position to take control of an endowment that Brenda has left to charity. Angus's plans are backed by Brenda's former friends and business partners who reveal their predatory nature given the chance to usurp Emma's inheritence. Ronnie, the peacemaker in the group, finds himself a pawn in both Angus and Joe's schemes, their previous friendship making him the only person that either can trust or confide in, despite and because of all that has passed between them.

Despite a willingness to use violence against each other, Joe first manipulates a former triad to seek vengengance against Angus, and when this fails orders a triad hit against Angus, Angus in turn has Ronnies son kidnapped in order to frame Joe, the three find that the only people that can truly understand themselves are each other. A would be show down between Angus and Joe ends with the three drunk and together reflecting on the paths they have taken, in a blaze of creativity they pen lyrics to Ka Ming's lost song, and for a night their friendship is all that matters. However they observe that the night is just a mirage that the next day Angus and Joe will be enemies again, and that to free himself from their manipulation Ronnie will work with the police to have them arrested.

Slowly accepting that to survive one must sometimes make choices that harm others, Yan makes a final attempt to make peace amongst the three, however they reply that things are too set in their course for them to turn back. During her crisis of identity Yan falls out with her mentor Dr Dylan (Joe Junior), realising her mistake she attempts to make amends by helping him to complete his life long ambition for Hong Kong to have a truly independent rock festival of its own. With tickets sold, the stage built and bands booked, the festival is cancelled at the last minute when the authorities decide that there is a health risk.

Yan finds herself on an empty stage increasingly surrounded by festival goers, some who have not heard that the festival had been cancelled, others who are indignant that the festival has been cancelled and others who have nothing better to do. Phoning in to her colleagues at the radio station Yan urges her listeners to ignore the constraints and fears of the authorities, that "a society at harmony is not one hundred people saying the same thing, harmony is one hundred people still being able to respect each other despite saying one hundred different things". She declares that the festival will go ahead anyway and for any bands, that want to, to come and play. Always drawn to whatever she does the three friends each arrive in turn, Angus with a truck load of instruments, speakers and equipment, and find themselves on stage and again for one night they don again their roles of lead guitar, drummer and bassist accompanied by the memory of Ka Ming and their younger selves. Singing Ka Ming's lost song they are seen by friends and loved ones as their truest and noblest selves, some for the first time.

Of actions and choices there are consequences and the series ends with the authorities reserving the right to hold some one responsible for the unlicensed festival. The policeman investigating Ka Ming's death predicts that because they have broken a taboo each of the friends will suffer the comeuppance that kama demands, that Joe be imprisoned for financial fraud, that Ronnie be ostracised by his peers and go blind and asks of Angus what his comeuppance will be. Learning that Yan has decided to leave Hong Kong and that she will no longer see the friends Angus predicts that his punishment will be that he will be lonely for the remainder of his life, never being able to be with the one woman who he has ever loved, the only woman he can ever love. Despite all his protestations that he is no longer a good person and that it is impossible for him to become one again, Joe cancels his contract to have Angus killed, and when faced with the sight of a child possibly being run over instinctively acts to save the child (revealed later to be also named Ka Ming), giving up his life in the process.