Favorite Contemporary Dramas

great performances, superb use of unreliable narrators, and the slow creeping horror of learning about meibao's past is intense.

really, really good; didn't understand why it was a classic until i watched it, but it absolutely deserves its reputation.

really good and tightly written timeloop drama with solid acting from the entire cast

touching supernatural drama. the lead is especially good.

superb chinese adaptation of the original jp manga. i like that they didn't go for 1:1 character interpretations, but rather made cn versions that made sense. the two leads are great, both as children and as teenagers, and the emotional beats are all there.

neat supernatural story with fun characters. feng baobao and wang ye are my faves.

very good and quite funny at times! luhan turns the corner on his acting here for sure.

pretty good crime drama. the interpersonal relationships are juicy.

a cop show, but with a genius artist as the sherlock holmes-y type. tan jianci is great here.

gao shide would be terrifying irl but he's cute insofar as the show goes... really refreshing for a bl, including like real physical affection that's not immediately sexual

wbl second season, with a timeskip... a whole new barrel of bl tropes to tackle and it does it quite well. impressive performances from the leads.

cn adaptation of the ping pong anime; there's some unnecessary things that drag it out more than necessary, but overall a quite good sports anime adaptation. bjt is especially good here.

WHOLESOME. once they get it together, probably the healthiest, most functional relationship i've ever seen in a cdrama? the bar is low, but this couple is really cute. one of the better romance dramas out there, even if the genre didn't just sort of inherently suck.

brilliant, but not something i would want to rewatch often... but i need to rewatch it at least once at some point, since i apparently missed a whole lot of what was going on with ycy the first time around.

i reject the tragic ending but mzj is quite good here.

actual plot is muddy but the cast has good chemistry. i love that they censored this by making the leads an old married couple. didn't know who gao hanyu was when i watched it, then didn't realize it was him after i watched call me by fire until i ran across it again. 

i literally have no idea how i enjoyed this between the absurd premise and the Extremely Questionable Depiction of Mental Illness, but i did. the penny-pinching charisma-less ml is funny.

technically i only watched like half of this, but it was weirdly charming despite also being full of stuff i find annoying af.