I started reviewing another drama but my head was spinning at all the details I forgot. So I though I would restart with the drama I’m currently watching.
- Age: 12+, middle school and up
- Romance: Super tame
- Genre: historical, detective mystery
- Episodes: 36x40min (24 episodes)
- Actors: 王子奇, 蘇曉彤
- Wiki: Chinese, English
TLDR for Friends
The leads aren’t cute at all but that’s not the draw of the drama anyway. It’s super well executed, and the plot is super tight; one mystery leads to another to another, all toward the big evil plot. If your kids can watch dead bodies, likes who done it, plus political intrigue, then it’s a good drama to watch with them.
I think I can get Astroboy to watch this with me but he doesn’t like dead bodies. Thumper doesn’t like mysteries that much and she makes fun of me when I talk about how much I love the chess game aspect of Chinese political intrigues. (Because everything is so subtle and often unsaid!)
But I would recommend it as a good drama for friends to watch, if they want something that’s not romance.
Plot and Quick Review
Main lead (王子奇) works with female lead (蘇曉彤) in solving a series of mysteries. He’s her “boss”. Each case seems to lead into a supposed insurrection 18 years ago. The first 2/3 of the drama leads the ML into finding his long lost father who supposedly died years ago. And the last 1/3 is finding the big bad.
As I’ve mentioned, the plot is super tight. But you’re definitely not watching for character development. It was not clear to me why the character relationships or personalities are the way they are because they really don’t spend a lot of time showing those aspects. But everyone’s acting is good. Nothing to complain about.
I got onto this drama because of my search for the popular and well reviewed drama for 2021 and this drama kept popping up on the list. So even though I don’t tend to watch Chinese mystery dramas, I started after I ran out of things to watch.
I’ve been binge watching the last 2 days cuz the lead keeps finding dead bodies! You’re lead from one murder mystery to another without any time to digest the info. So I just had to keep watching the next episode!
Plus it isn’t so clear who is the big bad in the story. There are so many potential leads.
What Parents Need to Know
The romance is very very tame. It’s a lot of talk. There are several scenes where the FL is re-enacting how someone is murdered and she “falls” into his arms or he “saves” her from falling. And cue your typical 5 second stare.
People get killed with swords. The autopsy parts are mostly hinted and not shown. They’re not taking out body parts like CSI.
But there are lots of dead bodies (with dead faces) you see, so if that kind of scares kids, better not watch. It’s why I rated this at 12+ (middle school).
Chinese Aspect?
You can google for the historical background where this drama takes place, which had something to do with “甘露之變”.
As for the Chinese, man, it was a bit hard for me. I got lost in all the imperial appointment names. But hey at least I learned how to say coroner in old Chinese: 仵作 (wu3 zuo4). Though I keep wanting to pronounce 仵 as chu2.
I also learned what 宦官 (eunuch) is, it’s another name for 太監, which is the word I grew up knowing. That’s the been the interesting thing about watching historical dramas from China; a lot of the words I learned from watching these historical Taiwanese dramas they don’t necessarily use in China dramas.
