Michelle Topham

Should have gotten to this when it premiered, it's exceptionally good. Production quality is very high for a low-budget drama, acting is fabulous, wire work is excellent, the premise is interesting and pretty unique, and it's well-written. Moves at a very fast pace as well.

Always enjoy Huang You Ming too, and he's superb in this. All in all, a very good series if you're looking for something short and worthwhile to watch.

It's Spring Festival (aka Chinese New Year). It officially started yesterday, but people start leaving their jobs for vacation up to a week before. Almost every Chinese drama is getting episodes slower released or on a hiatus because of that.

That's because most of China is now on holiday and visiting family (t's the BIGGEST travel period of the year in China with almost 3 billion people traveling). They're not watching dramas, so there's not much point releasing episodes most people won't be watching. Companies release them later when advertisers are willing to pay higher rates, and not during a period where much of China is not watching TV.

It's not a romance drama. If you look at the tags on MDL, it will tell you if romance is part of a drama. That tag doesn't appear here.

This is surprisingly entertaining, and Su Xiao Tong's acting skills have drastically improved since her awful performance in Imperial Coroner.

It's 24 episodes. WeTV says "Updated to 23".

Episode 23. Yep. Another decent person dead. Not ONE has survived throughout the entire effing thing. You could play a drinking game -- "Guess at what point in the episode THIS person dies. Take a drink for every 5 minutes you're further away from the death time" :). The writing in this is atrocious.

Dropped after Episode 23. It's all just so predictable and dull. Moving on to something better :) Enjoy if it's your thing.

It's not great. It's first half is excellent, but the second half has not held up to the promise of the first. Character growth of the two leads is non-existent, and the plot has become draggy. I think that's why people are rating it lower.

IMO, it's just as bad with the ML. Zero character growth for the 22 episodes I've watched (honestly struggling to muster up any enthusiasm to watch the rest of it at the moment). And I don't blame the actors. They've done the best with the script they were given.

Yep, most of the veteran actors in this are excellent, and especially Hou Chang Rong (Pei Yi's Master) who never disappoints.

As for Bai Lu and Wang Xing Yue, however, it's been quite a while since I've watched a drama with two utterly BLAND leads (not sure if it's the director's fault, but their performances are "meh"). Couldn't care less about either of their characters at this point :)

Thanks for the heads up. Just added it to my watch list. Also, it stars Fei Qi Ming, and I loved him in Why Is He Still Single? Plus, no 'idol actors', and that's always a plus :)

That's the problem with so many C-dramas, IMO. Beautiful actors who are as bland as milk toast when it comes to acting -- same thing here sadly, as the veteran actors are dominating the screen in almost every scene. Although I usually enjoy Wang Xing Yue's performances, but not in this.

No worries.

After being one of its biggest proponents, I'm about to drop it after Episode 22. Every. Single. Decent. Character = DEAD, and the most boring ML I've seen in any drama ever. Liked him at the beginning, but he's utterly useless, bland, and has had no character development at all. Not a fan of Pei Yi at this point either. Like you said, completely flat characters. Dull. Uninteresting.

Gorgeous cinematography, but the writing is also awful as, like you, I don't need looooong scenes of exposition to understand what I've already figured out an hour ago.

Giving it another episode, but it's not looking good for me after loving the first half :)

I just block them. It's annoying as we're already in a chat forum. Why would we need another one :)

He's the blandest ML I've seen in a long time. Started out liking him but expected some character growth. There's been none, and he's still as mainly useless as he was right from the start. The FL could have solved every case herself. (Just dropped it, btw, at Ep 22. Had enough of every decent person dying)

If there weren't autopsies/dissections on the dead, we would not have cures for thousands of illnesses/diseases.

And she did them because, as a woman, it was the only way she could save people. By figuring out how they died she could create a prescription that would save them. If she hadn't done that, hundreds more would have died.

And dissections of human bodies weren't a crime even then. UNAUTHORIZED dissections were a crime (it's explained in the drama), but as she was a woman she would NEVER have been given permission to perform one, so she had no choice.

It also had nothing to do with her not having respect for the dead, and everything to do with her making sure hundreds more people didn't follow them into death.

Then you're missing an exceptionally good drama. And btw, you're completely wrong on what global audiences like. Plenty of Korean and Chinese dramas that aren't romance dramas (so boring, so many of them) have been big successes outside China.

Chinese dramas are almost always popular in South East Asia when they're not popular in the west. Lived in Thailand for years, and every Thai I knew was obsessed with Chinese dramas :) They're almost always in the Top 10 on Netflix in Asian countries, even when they're barely being watched in the west.

No they didn't. All 34 episodes are being released but, because of Chinese New Year, there's a break for a day or two.

He's been in so many dramas -- Who Rules the World, Heroes, Sword and Fairy, The Longest Promise, Blossoms in Adversity, Ancient Love Poetry, and on and on. And he's brilliant in all of them.

He's only 13 as well. Will be incredible by the time he's an adult with that level of talent.

Five is nothing. :) Some Chinese emperors had thousands. Literally. Emperor Xuanzong for instance had over 40,000 concubines. Some emperors also had male concubines. That's where the old-fashioned term 'cut sleeve' meaning homosexual comes from.

A Chinese emperor, forget which one (?), once said he would rather cut off his sleeve than wake his male concubine who had fallen asleep on it :) Hence -- gays in China became known as 'cut sleeves'.

It's Spring Festival, aka Chinese New Year, so many programs are pre-empted for special programs that the Chinese watch with family and friends. This is one of them.