Arriving in Singapore to work as a mechanic, Malaysian Chinese Ye Meng (Shaun Chen) instead meets with one calamity after another. As if the mysterious disappearance of his girlfriend, Bai Yufang (Rebecca Lim), wasn’t already enough, he’s also cheated of all his money by Wang Dafa (Ha Yu) and Wang Tianhu (Felicia Chin), a father-and-daughter pair of con artists.

To top it all off, he ends up having to move in with them.

That’s the premise of Love Thy Neighbour (四个门牌一个梦, literally Four Name Plates, One Dream), a new 20-episode Chinese-language comedy-drama series debuting on Sep 27 on MediaCorp’s Channel 8.

Produced by Winnie Wong and written by her, Lau Ching Poon, and Lim Gim Lian, this “true-to-life” story revolves around four families with radically different lifestyles, background, and cultures who all live on the same floor of a Housing Development Board (HDB) flat.

It comes hot on the heels of the recent curry flare-up, where a family of Chinese nationals complained about the smell when their local Indian neighbour cooked curry. Viewed as an attack on local culture, the story made waves online and in the press, highlighting the trickiness of balancing cultural clashes between neighbours.

At a press conference held last Tuesday, Ha Yu, who won the Best Actor Award at the TVB 41st Anniversary Award Show in 2008, commented, “Singapore is a special country with lots of cultures […] and a lot of immigrants, so I believe we should respect other cultures. At the same time, we should look at it this way: was the curry smell really invading the Chinese family’s home? Nevertheless, I feel that both sides should have reached a compromise.”

Another character in Love Thy Neighbour’s highly varied cast is Ha Yu’s lover Lucy (Aileen Tan), who joked that her character was a “brainless Ah Lian” whose only goal was get married.

“I’m not like that at all in real life!” she laughed, even as she sashayed up and down the stage to catcalls from the attendees.

Claiming to be the complete opposite of the characters they portrayed was apparently a running theme, with Ng Hui, who takes the role of the determined, career-focused power woman Angelina describing it as a “challenge”.

Representing Singaporeans from various walks of life, the cast also includes veterans like Huang Wen Yong as an authoritarian bigot and Vivian Lai as a mother from Mainland China, as well as fresh faces like Sora Ma as a progressive modern woman.

Tackling hot-button issues of the day such as immigration and integration in a light-hearted way, the people behind Love Thy Neighbour hope that it will be a “bridge between the people and the government”.

Will these four families from diverse backgrounds be able to live in harmony? Find out in Love Thy Neighbour.

 

The 20-episode comedy-drama series Love Thy Neighbour debuts on Sep 27 and runs every weeknight at 9pm on MediaCorp Channel 8.