118 () was a Singaporean drama produced by Mediacorp Channel 8. It stars Chew Chor Meng, Pan Lingling, Dennis Chew, Ya Hui, Xu Bin and Hong Ling as the cast of this series.
The show replaced the second half of the 7.00 pm drama timeslot, airing at 7.30 pm to 8.00 pm on weekdays, making the 1st long form half an hour drama airing together with news-current affairs programme Hello Singapore at 6.30pm. It is the longest running Chinese drama produced by Mediacorp.
Hong Daming (Chew Chor Meng) is a positive and generous man. As his kopitiam and house number are both "118" and the numerals sounded like Yeo Yeo Huat or è¦Âè¦ÂÃ¥ÂÂ, the people around himHong gave him the nickname of "118", much to his delight. Together with his wife, Liu Meimei (Pan Lingling), he makes a living by running his very owned traditional kopitiam known as Yeo Yeo Huat or è¦Âè¦ÂÃ¥ÂÂ, and is very well-known and well-liked in Tiong Bahru. Whenever someone is in need, they would always seek DamingHong for help.
His family lives in a 3-room HDB Flat and shophouse directly above his traditional kopitiam Yeo Yeo Huat, which was built during the pre-war years, both of which are also located at Tiong Bahru as well. He has 4 children named Wang Shunfeng (Dennis Chew), Hong Shunshui (Xu Bin), Hong Jinzhi (Ya Hui) and Wang Yuye (Hong Ling).
Having 6 people living in the Tiong Bahru Shophouse HDB Flat is cramped-up enough, yet Daming also rents out a room to "Ah Niang", a middle-aged man whose original name is Li Weiliang (Chen Hanwei). Weiliang had studied fashion design in France, but circumstances led him to simply run a stall at Yeo Yeo Huat, selling zongzi with the recipe that his mother left for him.
Weiliang was not the only addition to the cramped flat. Later, Meimei's elder sister, Liu Jiejie (Liu Lingling) and her family also came to live with the Hong family when her husband, Zhang Tiancheng's (Chen Tianwen)'s business failed. Daming's own younger sister, Hong Shanshan (Sheila Sim), and her daughter Viveka Lee (Sun Yi En) also came to live with him "temporarily" when her husband Alex Lee (Seth Ang) disappeared mysteriously. Kind-hearted by nature, Daming felt that they must have come to him because they were at their wit's end. He would rather make room for them by having his own sons Shunfeng and Shunshui sleep in the living room and sleeping at Yeo Yeo Huat himself, than to chase them away heartlessly.
Daming also let his eldest daughter Jinzhi to run a stall selling wonton noodles and his best friend Lin Zhigao (Cavin Soh) run another stall selling fried bee hoon at Yeo Yeo Huat as well, and even allowed Zhang Tiancheng and his family sell pizzas, spaghettis and beers at Yeo Yeo Huat during the evening and night and convert the kopitiam into a restaurant by placing a few board labels to allow them to do business at night.
As such, the story unfolds with this myriad of personalities living under one roof and hanging around Yeo Yeo Huat, where many dramatic yet comedic events took place.
This drama presents the positive side of Singaporeans â passionate, practical, caring, resilient, faithful, tolerant and forward-looking â while also touching on the lesser side of our personalities. Through the dramatic play of events, we are able to see ourselves in many of the characters portrayed, who are in fact a mirror of the good and bad sides of all of us.
Note: Only credited cameos are listed.
Note: Only credited cameos and notable cast are listed.
The storyboard for the series, Ang Eng Tee, said in an interview with My Paper that the show may need to be re-scripted even after the script for all 255 episodes has finished writing. This is because speculations that the general elections may be held in 2015 is trending, and that the political parties are already introducing its candidates progressively. If the elections are held in September, the show will need to re-insert the GE buzz, and the director and cast will need to do re-takes. The election dates were announced on 25 August, and the GE buzz was inserted on episode 225 (7 September 2015), where Dennis Chew and Sheila Sim mentioned the election campaigns. However, as the show was pre-empted six times during that period, episode 225 could have been aired on 28 August if there were no interruptions, causing the campaigning period, which were held on 2 to 9 September, to have happened earlier than usual.
118 has the third-most number of nominations for Star Awards 2016, with 11 nominations in 10 award categories. The series has at least one nomination in every performance award for drama programmes. Along with Crescendo, The Dream Makers II, ' and Tiger Mum, it is one of the five dramas to be nominated for both the Best Drama Serial and Best Theme Song. It won 2 out of 10 award categories.