Hawak Kamay and other teleseryes

When it was announced that Hawak Kamay, the popular ABS-CBN drama series would be wrapping up, we could hear what sounded like an orchestrated sigh from audiences everywhere from North to South. It would be four months since the series first started airing with Piolo Pascual in the lead as Jin and Iza Calzado as Attorney B and Piolo’s leading lady. Hawak Kamay will end on Nov. 21.

Three of the country’s most powerful child stars — Zaijian Jaranilla, Andrea Brillantes and Xyriel Manabat — lead the young cast, which also included Yesha Camile, winner of the Grand i-shiner competition who was under the mentorship of Piolo during the pre-school talent camp. Hawak Kamay would also be joined by Nikki Gil as Piolo’s girlfriend whom he promised to join abroad where she had been hired to work on a ship as part of the crew but later got assigned as a singer.

Circumstances prevented Piolo from following Nikki as he had promised after a series of incidents left him with three children from a home for abandoned children. We were shown how the reluctant and unprepared Piolo was to suddenly become a de facto father figure to these kids. Slowly, as they encountered difficult trials, Piolo’s character gained insight into the more important things in life, and little by little, they all realized what exactly makes a family.

The story of Piolo’s Jin moved swiftly from caretaker of the children, to a love story with Attorney B, the lawyer assigned to problems that arose when parents of the adopted children appeared to claim their children. Iza’s character had a daughter (played by Andrea) who also got involved in the problems of her mom. To make things worse, Piolo contracted a sickness that brought an estranged father (Tirso Cruz) and his son (JM de Guzman) to his aid.

Not to be left out, Nikki’s character came home and discovered that her initial disgust at her former boyfriend had awakened old feelings. She was ready to reclaim Piolo after realizing that she was still in love with him. But it was too late.

There are many other series that we will report on in this column. Everyone is familiar with Be Careful with My Heart, the long-running story of Maya (Jodi Sta. Maria), the yaya of three kids whose father  (Richard Yap) eventually fell in love with her. This will also end this month. But there are still others that fans of TV dramas can follow like Forevermore, directed by Cathy Garcia-Molina, starring Enrique Gil and Liza Soberano, which tells of how love has unexpectedly blossomed between two different people.

Two Wives, loosely based on a 2009 Korean drama, is a three-way love story topbilled by Kaye Abad, Jason Abalos and Erich Gonzales. The three become involved in infidelity. Strawberry Lane, on the other hand, is a drama series with Bea Binene, Kim Rodriguez and Jhoana Marie Tan from a detention center for youth offenders, where they build up a strawberry lane of their unending friendship.

This is, by no means, the end of our list. As long as Filipinos love those TV dramas that they follow until the wee hours of the morning, we will not lose the audience since their children have always been around watching TV with their parents and will be the next batch of fans.

(E-mail your comments to [email protected] or text me at 0917-8991835.)