Since the start of the 90s, the quality of soap operas and sitcoms from TVB has taken a plunge. Needless to say, if you've seem them once, you've seen them all. Here's ten of the most trite, pathetic and conveniently contrived story lines that TVB has been trying to sell and resell to us for the past decade:

1. Telling the whole story in 30 seconds: The theme song that plays at the beginning of each chapter shows all the important scenes of the series, such as who dies, who kisses, who gets married and who's funeral people are attending.

2. Hatred and animosity between a rich family and a poor family: Some 20, 30 odd years ago, a woman (who's dirt poor) slept with a man (who became filthy rich) and had a son. The kid grows up with the mother and obviously has no idea who his father is. By some "miracle", he finds out who his real dad is (after becoming friends with him) and becomes the family savior because his brother (who grew up with the rich dad) is evil. "Incidentally," the evil son's wife is equally as evil.

3. Same jobs: Everyone is in real estate, in finance, or is a cop.

4. Unbelievably unrealistic love obstacles: The girl and guy who's supposed to fall in love spend half the series hating each other's guts. Over time, they discover they've fallen in love, but just when they're about to get together, 1001 things just "go wrong." Just what could go wrong, you might ask? Oh, the guy accidentally kills the girl's dad, or the guy's ex-girlfriend returns from the States, the girl gets into a car accident and loses her memory, or there's some other family crisis that prevents them from being together. But, don't worry - they manage to get together at the very last possible second of the TV series, just before the credits roll.

5. The rich dad always gets a heart attack after fighting with his evil son. The rich dad almost always dies.

6. All the evil people conveniently get killed at the end.

7. When the main female role dies, they "bring her back" by introducing her long lost twin, with whom the main male character falls in love with.

8. Whenever TVB wants to conveniently make stuff up, they produce these sepia-toned flashbacks to write in a piece of history whenever they please. The characters look exactly the same - except they all have longer hair.

9. Then there are the flash forwards. At the last possible second of the TV series, suddenly the time zooms 3, 5, or 7 years later, showing everyone having kids, out of jail and falling in love. Just a mere 20 seconds ago, everyone drowned in Hell - their entire family died, their house burned down and loansharks were chasing after them, threatening to chop them "roll upon roll". If the episode is 45 minutes long, they will spend 43 minutes dragging out everyone's death and misery, zoom past 7 years by flashing a "Seven Years Later" screen in black.

10. There's always some kind of kidnapping involving 2 Honda Civic cars full of men exchanging briefcases on top of some grassless hill in some kind of dreary weather. Some car always explodes.

Know a pathetic TVB story line? Share it with us!