Lumina: Our next go-to guilty pleasure

You've seen Hong Kong on the silver screen. You've seen it on the small screen. Now see it on the even smaller screen! Hong Kong's taking a stab at the web series format.

"Lumina" is an ongoing series of webisodes filmed in Hong Kong that is fast gaining popularity. The cast is made up of English-speaking Chinese, including beauty pageant winner Ju Ju Chan and Chinese-Canadian Michael Chan. Some of us Hongkies might also recognize Canadian Lawrence Milman from the classes he teaches at Pure Yoga.

The series' premise centers on the titular Lumina Wong, who falls in love with a man who appears in reflective surfaces. Everything's peachy until we discover that Lumina's prince charming is actually a baddie from a dark, otherwordly realm. Or something like that.

It's all very deliberately mysterious and melodramatic and the dialogue is contrived. Often, the tension-building sequences fail to actually build the intended tension and the whole episode plain drags along. Each six-minute episode could be cut down to half its length.

And, yet, it's strangely addictive. "Lumina" is well on its way to becoming our next go-to guilty pleasure. Besides, one episode takes about as long as drying your hair.

The series is shot in HD and looks great, even on a laptop. We can't get enough of the gritty Hong Kong street scenes that give the city an edgy-glam appeal and its endearing pointed cultural references sprinkled throughout (milk tea in a styrofoam cup instead of Starbucks, congee delivered to a sick friend's door, moms nagging daughters to go home for dinner).

Catch up on missed episodes of "Lumina" at www.luminaseries.com