Deirdre19

Right now I feel they have about equal screentime, but I try to focus on the ML whose acting is actually quite pleasant to watch and do the washing up when the FL has her pouting scenes.

Without having read the book I think it's ok as a filler drama. I'm watching while packing moving boxes. Personally, I'm not a fan of the pastel-colour, pink colour-scheme and the FL's bad acting makes me enjoy all the side characters a lot more than her scenes.
As you said, it's not horrible, it's nothing extraordinary either.

Well, I'm all for giving people opportunities to improve their skills. However, usually actors in their learning phase try to gain acting experience in supporting roles. Casting someone with such mediocre acting skills as the lead is unfair both to the other lead and to the viewers who have to suffer through this "practice run".

This one! Definitely this one!
I also prefer him in historicals rather than xianxia. Hopefully, less clown make-up and better plot. For me, the most important criteria would be direction and co-star. I'm sick and tired of seeing him paired with little girls just learning to act.

Haha, I feel your disappointment. There's been a lot of "toned-down" badass female leads lately.
To be honest, for me, her motivation in this 2nd life-time isn't clear at all. She didn't come across as hating the guy before, so it is quite unclear to me why she's doing everything to escape from the arranged marriage. She has the memories of her previous life, so she knows they are supposed to end up together.

So I managed to watch 4 episodes of this... basically because there isn't much else to watch right now.
Episodes 1-2 were so boring and uneventful that I nearly dropped it already. Episodes 3-4 were a bit better and occasionally made me laugh. The jokes in this are actually quite good and always unpredictable. I really liked the ML's mother in those episodes, she was fun to watch. Sadly any random side-character, including the supposed villains, is more fun to watch (and can act more naturally) than the FL. Her standard facial expression of wide open eyes and pouted lips reminds me of a blow-up doll and she has about the same level of charisma.
I'll give it a few more episodes before I decide whether to drop or continue this.

Sure, that's the easiest way to dismiss arguments that you cannot refute. Guess what, I DON'T CARE what you call me 😂😂😂😂

It is on Viki. From what I heard, the subs there are better than the original ones provided by Mango (machine translation). I watched it with the original subs, the translated proper names take some getting used to, but otherwise it was ok.

It does not help either that the FL keeps virtually the same facial expression (wide-eyed stare) no matter what is happening.

Because it never makes any sense. Most people would have trouble going 200 years into the past (or in the case of millennials, to a time before the smartphone) yet we are expected to believe that a person can go to ancient times and perfectly fit in and speak an ancient language within half-a-day, or even become a superior being due to their "modern knowledge" (which in most cases is non-existent if people can no longer google stuff). It's is just total BS.

Yeah, same here, I couldn't finish that one either, despite Jeremy.
Here she's looks exactly the same and "acts" exactly the same. I watched two episodes and was expecting her to call for "Shifu" at any moment 😂😂😂 I guess I'm still traumatised from the one that shall not be named.

Endings were rushed before that as well. It's not the length of the drama that will influence this, but the ability of the director/editor/writer to handle the pace properly. They usually waste a lot of time in the beginning and then rush it in the end, as if they had no coordination at all.
Classic example is LLTG, they had 56 episodes (split in two parts) and it was draggy as hell in the beginning, but the ending was still a rush-job.

ML is ok, FL has two settings, wide-eyed vacuous stare or whiny pouting. That woman cannot act if her life depended on it.

A big part of this is probably due to the acting. That permanent wide-eyed stare or whiny pouting seem to the the only two expressions that her face can manage. It get's really boring, really fast.

Not even Douban knows...

Well, that's a problem with the writing, not with the actors. I generally hate FLs behaving like little girls, with all the pouting and immaturity, no matter who the actress is.
There seems to be a trend to keep dumbing down the plots so that in the end nothing is left but a pile of clichés.
It is really disappointing, because I would like to see an engaging historical drama with some grown up actors who can actually act.

Just watched the trailer for this... Why oh why did they have to give the FL the voice of a 5-year-old??? It sounds so ridiculous and annoying! Not sure if I will be able to endure this for 40 episodes...

C'mon give us some grown-up MLs! No everyone likes to look a prepubescent boys (who mostly cannot act at all).

It's not a new trend... even Eternal Love AKA 3L3WTMOPB had an underwater kiss in 2017.
It belongs to the classic set of romance tropes in C-drama, together with the fireflies, a walk through the Lantern Festival, flower petals that need picking out of FL's hair, etc. etc.

By now, it would have been faster to learn some basic Chinese...