No Reserve (Chinese: 巾幗梟雄之諜血長天), also known as Rosy Business III, is a 2016 Hong Kong espionage television drama serial created and produced by Lee Tim-sing for TVB.
Set primarily in Canton, China (now known as Guangzhou) during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the show's story follows the affairs of Chinese spies and their entanglements with underground triads and the Empire of Japan.
Co-starring is Myolie Wu as Kong's partner Cheung Kei-sang, and Edwin Siu as their rival, Chau Sai-kai.
Cheung Kei-sang (Myolie Wu) and the orphan Chau Sai-kai (Edwin Siu), two young lovers from a village in Southern China, are forcibly separated on their marriage day due to the Japanese invasion.
She takes up a different identity as a Cantonese opera performer and cozies up with many Japanese officials, to the point of selling her body to extract military intelligence.
She also meets Kong Sheung-hung (Wayne Lai), another Communist spy, and together they go on a mission to search for a Japanese businessman, who is linked to the war.
They learn that the businessman, Suzuki Kazuo, is actually Sheung-hung's long lost twin brother, who ended up in Japan and was raised by an abusive Japanese father.
Though Lee was initially against the idea, he agreed to helm the project if head writer and assistant creative director from the previous two installments, Cheung Wah-biu, would return to TVB after leaving in 2010.
Ip drafted a preliminary script for No Reserve in May 2012 and began officially working on the project after the completion of Bullet Brain in August 2012.
The success of Rosy Business and No Regrets relaunched the careers of main leads, Sheren Tang and Wayne Lai.
[16] A sales presentation trailer was filmed in October 2012 and released in December to mixed reviews, with many thinking it was too similar to No Regrets.
However, in May 2013 when filming had hit its halfway mark, TVB pulled the drama from the 2013 broadcast lineup, and the series was being subjected to review by a censor board.
At a promotional event to promote its release in September 2016, Lai said TVB's hesitance to air No Reserve on television may be due to its political content rather than sexually explicit content; the producer Lee indicated that the censorship in 2013 was due to Sino-Japanese relations "at the time",[22] in a reference to the 2012 anti-Japanese demonstrations, subsequently prompted an effort by regulators and filmmakers to limit over-the-top demonization of Japan by Chinese historical dramas, a subject that until then was rarely restricted.
Lai stated that it does not count as part of the Rosy Business franchise without Cheung Wah-biu involved when he was asked about a potential fourth installment in 2021.
Comparing it to its two successful predecessors, audiences criticized the "old-fashioned" plot, the abundantly absurd historical inaccuracies, excessive sexual violence, and one-dimensional characters.