Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Playing Field Road, Mongkok

Moving onto episode 9: The Red Pole, we get a brief glimpse of that, sadly, rare beast in Hong Kong: the corner shophouse. I know of only four current remaining examples (and one of those is also about to go) and sadly the following one isn't one of them.

We see Mark McGann (who played Brady) crossing the road next to Mongkok Police station and behind him, on the corner of Playing Field Road and Sai Yeung Choi Street North, is a great example of this old and increasingly rare type of HK architecture.

As mentioned, sadly this building no longer exists and for those who don't live in HK this is a good example of how redevelopment here works. If you look at the following Streetview grab of the same corner, you can see the remnants of the old joists that joined the building on to its neighbour. Both buildings on the left and right are still there, but the best looking one (and most likely due to the fact that it was low rise) has been replaced by a new generic - but taller and more "rent-efficient" - building called the Capricorn Centre (built 1995).

Yellowthread Street (TV series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Mongkok Police Station, Kowloon

I've been putting it off for a while and got sidetracked over the last 6 months or so with the abundance of locations to be found in the I Spy series, but now that is slowly drawing to a close I can start doing some of this UK series from 1990.

The series was a bit hit and miss, and is no better second time round for me. It's nice to see the locations and at least try and spot some, as well as some early turns by people such as Bruce Payne and Tzi Ma. But on the whole the program was let down by a slightly plodding pace and wooden acting from some (though not the two mentioned). The thing didn't really pick up pace until later in the series, but by then I think people had lost interest and a planned second series, aimed to be more centered around HK-style action, never got off the ground.

Anyway, it has a great opening theme and lots of familiar faces from the local film and TV industry as well as some interesting locations, starting off with this one - Mongkok Police Station. This is a grab from the very first episode called Power Play.

Mongkok station is indeed a working station and this block seen on TV is the last remaining one. There was at least one more similar columned block that fronted Nathan Road (you can just see a tiny bit of it here in the I Spy series) that was demolished to make way for the MTR construction. The shot above was taken through the main gate on Playing Field Road (yes, that is a real street name!).

I Spy (TV Series) - Robert Culp (1965) - Nathan Road, Mongkok

After a nice long lay off over Xmas and New Year it's time to get back to I Spy and the Danny was a Million Laughs episode. Again, this was a fantastic ID done by Thomas who correctly identified the open area on the right of the picture as the Mongkok Police Station compound. Here is the snap anyway.

Here is Thomas' original comment:

...are those government issue vehicles behind the wired fence? Looked like charcoal grey Police trucks to me. Might be Mongkok Police Station. Requires further comparison with older photos to confirm

And it wasn't long until the confirmation popped up on Gwulo courtesy of user 'harigger'. Here is the link: http://gwulo.com/node/18199.

Now, this area of Nathan Road looks vastly different these days because the rather large columned building on the right (I'm assuming it was once part of the Police Station) has long gone and is now largely open space - a compound that surrounds the remaining Police Station block.

Look closely and you may see at least one of the buildings in the distance is visible on both the 1965 screen grab and the Streetview grab shown above (taken circa 2009).