House of the Dark Shadows

Oof what a rollercoaster!

Keep in mind as you read this I am not nitpicky and I enjoy shows for what they are. This all just my personal feelings on this title.

I was enthralled almost from the get go. There are so many emotions running thru this entire series. FYI - There are 41 rpisodes not 27. I watched this on Gagaoolala.

It is a bitter sweet love story that spans 110 years. I was never bored watching this. Annoyed alot but you are suppose to be. I my opinion it was well written. The jumps back and forth in time (forward and backward) were never confusing. They served their purposes well.

This is a story of love, deceit, betrayal, greed, and loss. I dont know how many tears I shed so be prepared for that.

Warning: There is rape and a coerced relationship.

Also some of the effects were not the best but I could overlook this as I did enjoy the story.

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Addictive emotional work-out

Technically, much of this is excellent. I'm going to put my But's... in comments hidden by a spoiler tag because even alluding to them vaguely gives things away.

Since this is available via GagaOOLala, there are gay characters and many English-orientated viewers tend to equate Thailand with BL, I'll say this very clearly at the top - this is NOT BL. If you want BL, look elsewhere. If you need to see male actors acting in intimate ways, expect a lot of fast-forwarding or just look elsewhere, there are plenty of other choices. A central character is gay and it very much matters that he is gay and closeted in a predominately het world, but this isn't a gay story. Some of the choices Gaga makes on what to stream confuse me, this is one. I watched it in part because I'm interested in how each Thai channel has a somewhat different flavour to their lakorns and I hadn't run into any from Channel 8 before.

It is a tropey lakorn. The first five hours alone gave us an entire lakorn's worth (41 ep x 45 min version on Gaga). If you don't know lakorn tropes, it's probably best to start with something else. This one lays them on thick and fast and it really helps to understand context. Like the way historical lakorns criticise out-dated attitudes while also mining them for melodrama. Things like men controlling women, masters controlling servants, those with wealth and status controlling those without.

Within that framework, the acting is excellent. Everyone does exactly what they're supposed to and does it very well. There are quieter moments of significant emotion, all of it intensified by the exaggeration of what's led up to it.

There were editing choices which undermined that at times, but for the most part it delivers. Its pacing is a big part of making that work. It ricochets from one thing to another and changes focus several times - tropey horror to tropey tropey tropey new mistress/2nd wife nightmare to forbidden romance to, well some of these will be spoilers so I'll stop :) - and that allows it to go in for BIG emotions without, for the most part, becoming overwhelming. IMO this isn't one to binge.

It is addictive though. I tried to drop it a few times and didn't succeed. Now that I'm through it, I'm not sure how I feel about that.

For nearly all of it, they got the emotional truths right - why characters do what they do - and that is always the key to a successful lakorn. This one packed in a dizzying array of complicated, often layered, emotional truths.

They did drag it out though, like the writers were too addicted to throwing one more thing in.

Shifting to a comment so I can hide it under a spoiler. Will try to write it so it gives as little away as possible.

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