But the Noble House scene stealer is the bearded baddie, Rhys-Davies, who really gets into lines such as, “Damn you, Ian Dunross, and perdition to the Noble House!”īut final credit for this handsome achievement goes to Clavell and producer-screenwriter Eric Bercovici, who knew what they were doing after collaborating on Shogun, the Emmy-winning miniseries about feudal Japan. The Oriental performers include Khigh Dhiegh, who played criminal mastermind Wo Fat on Hawaii Five-O and plays a cocaine-dealing mobster here named Four Finger Wu. Raffin, an unglamorous beauty with off-beat charm, is a refreshing departure from the usual miniseries ornament-bimbo. Brosnan, best known for Remington Steele, is excellent as the calculating, debonair tai-pan. These are not the most demanding roles ever to hit television, but the cast brings them to life. Several scenes were shot at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which is more colorful - and much neater - than the one in New York. Casey and the tai- pan make a business trip to the lovely neighboring territory of Macao which seems to serve the same purpose. The Gornt-Dunross rivalry extends to the race track, which has no bearing on the plot but adds another picturesque Hong Kong setting. Everyone is having too much fun plotting and counter-plotting. Naturally, that doesn’t stop both from becoming entangled - Bartlett with Gornt’s gorgeous former mistress, Tcholok with the handsome tai-pan himself.

Bartlett reminds Casey Tcholok (his negotiator) that this is “a business trip, not a romantic holiday.” The romantic entanglements in Noble House are presented as distractions that could fuzz otherwise solid business judgment. He enlists the help of Linc Bartlett (Ben Masters), a Donald Trump-like American entrepreneur who plays both sides against the middle. Gornt, a dead ringer for Bluto in the old Popeye cartoons, seeks to take over Noble House and replace Dunross as tai-pan. The bad blood between the two goes way back. The speaker is Quillan Gornt (John Rhys-Davies), despicable arch business rival of Ian Dunross and Struan & Co., also known as Noble House, the oldest trading house in Hong Kong. “We are going to pluck the Noble House like a dead duck!” But the time passes quickly and enchantingly thanks to the raw beauty and vitality of Hong Kong, an island-city built on precipices and mountainsides, where the glass-and-steel towers of today shadow the narrow teeming streets of antiquity, and sampans bob in the harbor at sunset.

Ian dunross noble house