My Roommate Is a Detective

Great Series and some political insight to 1910s and 1920s China

SPOILER ALERT. This review does not talk about details of episodes, but does contain information about the main characters, that only comes to light in the later episodes. Comedy, family-political-romantic drama, mixed with crime mysteries. The summary and other reviews are accurate. Imo, this show has a lot of creativity and depth. Inspector Qiao, a one time mob capo for the Bai crime family, has become a doggied police inspector with an odd sense of seeing justice done. Although, he still carries some of his former tendencies of a cold hearted mobster, willing to use torture to resolve an investigation. His relationship with Boss Bai is still from a sense of loyalty. Leon Zhang does a great job of showing the internal conflict Qiao has struggling between loyalty and justice. Episode 1 shows Qiao unsuccessfully trying to resolve a murder case. In comes Lu Yao, an intelligent, educated and handsome young man with OCD. The OCD is one of the main driving forces behind Lu's never-ending pursuit to solve cases, always ensuring the culprit is discovered. Hu Yi Tian portrays Lu as cocky and confident, all the while Lu is almost sub servant when interacting with his family. Just as Qiao and Lu begin to bond advancing the investigation, reporter Bai You Ning enters the picture. The beautiful, energetic, Bai is just in the way at every turn, setting the relationship between Lu and Bai on a course of constant dispute. Qiao and Bai You Ning know each other, as it turns out Boss Bai is her father. Thru Lu's brilliant deductive skills, and aid from You Ning and Qiao, the cause is solved in a dramatic fashion. Xiao Yan is the reason I started this series. Her part as Green Snake in the drama The Legend of White Snake made me a fan. She does not disappoint. Silly, cute, annoying when needed. Xiao brings her serious, thoughtful, and beautiful persona to life just when her relationship with Lu needs to take the next step, on multiple ocassions. So sets the format of the series. You Ning and Lu, thru fortunate or unfortunate circumstance, become roommates in a rental flat. Separate sleeping and living areas, so it's all good. Thru the course of the series, Qiao and Lu develop a bromance lite relationship. Lu and You Ning work closely together on cases and sling insults at each other at every opportunity. They do become the love interests of the show. The crime part of the series is creative, if somewhat fantastical and silly. Just as in the Murdoch/Holmes/Poirot shows, a little factual science turns into over the top crime mysteries. Thru it all, there is ultimately a main culprit, but you'll have to get to episode 35-36 to see it all brought together. Bolstered by the great acting and charisma of Qiao, Lu, and You Ning, and taken at face value, this series is top notch niche entertainment. I binged it and enjoyed every episode. Not cluttered with outsized emotional drama, the show really keeps the mystery at the forefront.

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SEASON 2 CONFIRMED?!!!

I know many are upset about the female lead and her annoying character and I have to agree, but since she isn't leaving you had to get used to her character which made me like her more. She isn't necessary in the plot and got between the bromance like A LOT, but she's a cute spoiled brat. I could care less about the bromance since there barely was any i'm only interested in the investigations, they were amazing! Super hard to figure out anything (at least for me) thought I was close on the missing train episode but nope I fell right into the trap! It's a must watch if you love detective stuff!

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Comical detective combi duo (trio?) who will brighten your day

"My Roommate is a Detective" is a light-hearted and quick-pacing detective drama with great main lead chemistry. For me, it was the perfect drama to watch in this slight depression period.

What this drama has done very well:

♡ Excellent character design and acting:
Unlike many other detective dramas, the detective (aka Sherlock) in this drama is not this far than perfect. Lu Yao is socially awkward, cares only about himself, and has only eyes for money or food. And did I forget to mention that he is also a coward? But to complement his characteristical flaws, LY has an eye for details and is extremely intelligent. At the start, he sorely started cooperating with Qian Chu Sheng, the police officer, for money and self-satisfaction. However, LY realizes later that his work reveals the truth and provides justice to victims. That is when he starts to care for the people around him genuinely. LY develops a more mature personality and realizes that the purpose of his existence is no longer to only care about himself but also to fight for those he loves. What this drama has done very well is to focus on the dorky and shallow side of his character at first and slowly reveals the depth. LY gives me a feeling of finding him cute and funny at the start but later on liking him more after "knowing him better".
Many netizens say that Hu Yi Tian has had a breakthrough with acting as LY. I agree. I have only seen HYT playing Hua Wu Que in Handsome Siblings (2020). At that time, his acting skills did not impress me and I, in particular, did not get attached to him. But this time, HYT was able to become one with LY and expressed all the flaws and strengths of this character and their attached emotions exceptionally well. What also impressed me was that HYT's own personality is nothing like that of LY. I am looking forward to seeing more of HYT's future work.

But the drama's real highlight for me is the performance of Zhang Yun Lun. Between his character Qian Chu Sheng and LY's characters, LY has the more interesting personality. QCS (aka Watson) is the cooler and sporty womanizer, who grew from an ex-gangster to a police officer. A popular type of male lead character but not new nor difficult to act. But ZYL has made this character alive. He was able to show "love", "heartbreak", "care," and "concern" so vividly with his facial expressions that he genuinely moves my heart. I am especially in awe of ZYL's beautiful smile, such as when he laughs about the stupidity of Lu Yao or when the team successfully solved a case. What makes my heart jump is that he shows his "miracle smile" rather seldom due to the more serious nature of his character. Reading the live comments of the netizens during those scenes, I clearly was not the only one.
I have never seen ZYL's work before. Later I found out that he is the more mature actor who has starred in many dramas and movies but never really made it to the top. That explains why his acting is so natural and offers magnetic attraction. When MRiaD aired its last episode, ZYL published a personal letter to QCS, beautifully describing the inner emotional world of his character. In his letter, he expresses his empathy, knowing that QCS puts on a tough and player cover, chooses to live without attachment is because QCS is afraid of making others heart-broken should they lose him. In the world in which QCS lives, tomorrow is never certain. But it is Bai You Ning and LY who came into his life that he realized that there is another way of living, that he does not need to face the world alone anymore. It is such a marvelous letter, and it truly shows how much ZYL has researched his character and understands how he feels.

What needs to be highlighted is the excellent character design of all supporting "culprits", "victims," and other "suspects". Though most characters appear in no more than 1-2 episodes, all of them have a story, and the acting was superb. I felt sorrow and sympathy after hearing their stories. MRiaD showed a world that there is no clear line between white and black, good and bad. LY and QCS never preached after solving the cases but quietly hand over the culprit to the police with expressions of compassion.

♡ Beautiful chemistry between two male leads:
Both actors have an in-depth understanding of the psychological structure of their characters, and they work marvelously as partners. Though it is not a BL drama, they have a few extremely sweet moments together. It is very clear that their relationship is not simple. QCS quickly discovered the detective talent to LY and convinced him to work for him. Despite how selfish and improper LY often acts (e.g., stealing objects from the crime site or eat at a restaurant without picking up the bill), QCS would clean after him. These scenes always trigger fans to comment frantically: Awww, QCS is spoiling his wifey again! I soon noticed that those annoying expressions of QCS slowly evolve to smiles of acceptance. And this process is so sweet to watch. Whoever watches this show would agree with me that the couple QCS x LY is one of the best couples of 2020.

♡ Quick pacing of the story: The fast forward button is my best friend when it comes to watching draggy Chinese dramas. However, when it comes to MRisD, I have not used that button once. There are over 20 cases in that total of 36 episode drama. The quick revealing of the mystery is very satisfactory. After each case, the shows quickly introduces the next victim so that netizen comment with love: welcome the next "dying person" on stage! There is a rumor that the scriptwriter might be very famous in the past but has not been writing because of some personal scandal. It is not very certain who this person is, but it could be his protest to the Chinese drama industry to stop producing lengthy and poor written dramas.
I also need to mention how happy I am that this is the first republican era drama that I know of in which Japanese is NOT the evil behind everything! I am really tired of this type of one-sided bashing towards the Japanese, and this is the main reason why I tried to avoid republican era dramas as it gives me the strong flavor of propaganda by the Chinese party.

Now a few words on what this drama could have done better:

❤︎ Lack of realism in the cases: I have to say that many cases in this drama have the flavor of Detective Conan. To create more dramatic and higher satisfaction of case solving, the writer intentionally creates highly peculiar crimes (e.g., disappearing trains, bloodsucking vampires or self-flammable man, etc.). As a result, the process of conducting the crime had to be remarkably complicated. It is difficult to imagine that it would work in reality. Also, because the stories are high-pacing, there is not enough time to leave hints to create enough audience involvement. Besides looking at supporting characters' facial expressions to guess who the culprit might be, it is nearly impossible to guess the mechanisms. At the end of the series, similar to many detective dramas, it becomes clear that all cases are linked to each other and backed by a "big boss". This process felt very forced and not at all convincing to me. Those who often watch detective dramas with more thought-through cases and proper audience involvement might be disappointed here.
Overall I was not this happy with the ending. It felt abrupt, with LY's family playing a major role in it. I am not going to spoil anyone, so I would not go to detail here, but their motivation for their actions is not logical, and it was only written this way to create the dramatic for the ending.

❤︎ Questionable female lead character design: MRiaD has three main leads: LY, QCS, and the female lead Bai You Ning, played by Xiao Yan. She is the daughter of elderly Bai, the gang leader and boss of QCS. Because of her righteous character, she does not support his dad's business and becomes an independent reporter from a small newspaper who has a strong character. She is the roommate of LY in this drama. After watching a few episodes, it becomes obvious that this character was added after the script was written. Moreover, her character seemed to have been carved out from LY. Unlike the two male leads and many supporting characters, her character lacks depth and even shows conflicting behavior. Her actions are predictable and often not necessary to the main story. Ther is a strong assumption that originally, QCS was supposed to be LY's roommate (noticed that the drama never showed where QCS lives?!), but because of some commercial or political reasons, the makers decided to add a third female main lead.
Xiao Yan didn't do a bad job playing this BYN, and though her personality was not likable at the start, it added humor to the drama. Later one she underwent a positive character development, which made her presence more pleasant. I just wished that when producers and makers who make these types of decisions that decrease the quality of drama due to some odd reasons, they shall rethink again knowing that audience are not stupid.

Because of the last two points, I rate this drama as an eight. But overall, I really enjoyed and would recommend it to anyone who loves detective, comedy, brotherhood/two male leads/BL, and republican era dramas.

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I loved how the cases usually took up more than one episode. It allows us to not be able to predict when the case will be over by the amount of time left in the episode.
I was hoping for more bromance between Lu Yao and Qiao.
The one thing that I hate about this drama is the main actress, Bai Youning. She is the most annoying person and always tries to get what she wants by bullying Lu Yao. I honestly do not see how he fell in love with her and got married in the end.
I was very curious at the end what was written on the paper he got on the boat at the very end.
The cases always had a mysterious twist to them which always pulled me in.

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My roommate is a detective : the title tells almost all. The action takes place in Shangai during the chinese republic era, so the settings and wearings are quite beautiful. Solving crimes is the big part of this drama but what is more interesting is the main leads interactions and backgrounds. Caring interactions grow smoothly and joyfully with some very hilarious scenes between the 3 main characters. Who is really loving who ? Who is fooling who ? How family matters will interfere in everyone's life ? You'll have to guess and bet how things will turn out. And this is quite thrilling ! I was watching this drama for Hu Yi Tian (detective Lu Yao), but indeed Leon Zhang (police officer Qiao, previous top gangster) was much more amazing and looked quite charming wifh a golden heart !

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A great mystery show

Overall this show is a great mystery show. I have watched it on Viki with the comments turned on, and boy did i enjoy both the show and the people's reactions to it.😂
The two male leads have crazy chemistry between them and both actors are just crazy talented and adorable! It's definitely the best Chinese show and the best Chinese actors I've seen so far!
As for the female lead... from my personal opinion and what i saw live with other people's comments, even though the actor was great, the character itself was annoying, and honestly, they could have given up on her character altogether in the show, as she contributed absolutely nothing to it. It was almost funny seeing all the hate comments on the screen when she came on it, and the romance towards the end was really forced and out of the blue😅
Anyway, the plot itself is really interesting and the flow of the story is great! It's both lighthearted and interesting and overall very enjoyable☺️
I really recommend watching it👍

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Dropped

The drama is enjoyable. I liked the relationship between the two male leads. But the pattern of every episode, in the end, is repetitive. The horizontal plot is not very intriguing. And the characters do not grow, at all.
As many others have written, the female character is really annoying . And the romance one of the least plausible things in the whole story. There wasn't any chemistry between the two of them. Then. Bam! Love! No, thank you.
The thing I like about the drama is the setting and the costumes. That one is really well done.
The whole part with the Westerners speaking in English and then in Chinese if then in English again, often dubbed badly.... It's quite confusing though.

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This series would be on top trending if it is a boys love series

I really like the story and the act is quite good. The series have several criminal cases which are interesting. But the most thing I interested is the caring of Qiao Chu Sheng for Yu Gong Zi, and the worst idea in the series is the love story between Yu Gong Zi and Bai You Ning. The old motif that the incredible man falling in love with a useless (it’s not that bad but compare to the others, that’s useless, I can’t use the other word for this description) girl is obsolete, many films have already got that. But this is my personal opinion. This movie is amazing, it makes people understand how a country can stand up and survive from colonization. It takes efforts, blood and sacrifices of many person, many hero to having the freedom. So people now who have the chance to learn, to build up the country, please try your best to learn to improve the quality of lives, to make your country a better place to live, to show the world the better version of you, the version with shining and intelligence that people would admire like Yu Gong Zi. Not dreaming about a love story where a useless girl and an incredible guy falling in love, that’s not help at all, what kind of films is it if it encourage people to stay useless and there will be love falling from the tree? And emphasizing again, this is my personal opinion, so if you have different opinions you can tell me about that under this review.

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First time I really really like the acting of Hu Yi Tian. Here his character is very different then his usual character. I think this is the first time i see that curling naughty eyes in Hu Yi Tian eyes.

But for the story itself quite boring actually. The cases is quite complicated, but somehow toward the ending the more bored I became. The romance between Bai You Ning & Lu Yao help me hang on to the drama. But I really like the twist in the plot in the end.

Really like the interaction between Bai You Ning & Lu Yao. Their feelings build slowly through admiration & friendship. Admire the loyalty of Qiao Chu Sheng to Bai Qi Li,. Like the friendship of our trio.

Overall this is one good detective drama that quite have everything actually, not only about the cases. They have a little bit politic, romance, friendship & of course good plot that still can surprise us in the end.

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Interesting and enjoyable, never boring

This show is a whole new world, it's first of all set in 1920s, which means we got some classy western suits and some cute dresses with feathers, hats and all that jazz. The characters were styled very well except for the female lead's hair god that perm was awful.
This show is actually very similar to the way the detective cartoons I used to watch when I was younger but with a bit more creepy and hard to understand cases. So I really enjoyed the way the show was structured.
The bromance between the main leads were really hard to not notice, they're so on your face. It was one of the best parts of the show. We actually got more bromance than actual romance. The relationship between the three leads were extremely wholesome.
Many people seemed to hate on the female lead for simply breathing (caution : if yll watch on viki kindly switch off the timed comments everytime she comes on because the watchers will continuously hate on her and annoy everyone), I dont really hate her, I actually like her for most parts except she is a little immature but so is the male lead but of course we never say anything bad about a male lead :) she isnt the best female lead ever but still, she is actually pretty cute and thier relationship is cute too.
I have to say the second Male lead is literally so charming. His smile and his mannerisms are so cute! His character was super mature and caring. He did so much for others. I will definitely be supporting him in the future!
Hu yi Tian's best acting and best character is this drama! His character is very unique he is a blabber mouth, immature and quirky. You can see he worked really hard by the way he remembered all those hard monologues with scientific terms and facts.
To be honest all the characters are very unique, I really love how such characters I have never seen personally on screen.
The cases were very very enjoyable to watch, very interesting and smart.
I also wanna mention how even though the main lead is a genius, he wasnt shown as perfect, even he made mistakes, he had flaws and developed himself by the end of the series.
The intro song was literally so good, I listen to it on repeat! So addictive!

Now onto what I didn't like, this show was unrealistic. In so many levels. I dont think woman had jobs at that point of time. I dont think the female lead and so many other female characters were allowed to be so active in society. The show would have made more sense if it was set in the modern era, but the cases were solved without technology so that wouldn't work either.
There were apparently alot of questionable things like face masks in 1920s??? Traffic in 1920s?? And apparently god father ost in 1920s??
Some points in the cases I used to question some things like it was almost impossible for some things to happen.
I dont like how the show started, without any introduction just out of no where we were introduced to random things! It's so abstract.
There were some problematic scenes like landlady was extremely rude and lowkey sexually assaulting the main lead but nobody hates her! They still only hate the female lead, I was seriously so annoyed.
The inspector was actually so bad at his job though, it didn't sit right with me at how corrupt and favouring the whole political system was, though it was set in 1920s and china was a mess at that time I understand that. Still the inspector is so bad at his job lmao. If it wasnt for the main lead he would have solved no cases.
After a point the murders started to be very easy to guess like it was too easy! I wanted something different!
Overall I enjoyed this show alot! I reccomend for a thrilling and interesting experience :)

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