Michelle Topham

I subscribe to WeTV. And they'll probably release more free episodes on YT later on, but they only ever have them for paid subscribers for the first few days. Keep checking WeTV's YT channel.

This is absolutely one of the best Cdramas I've seen all year, and I've been watching MOSTLY Cdramas :) And yep, right down to the lowliest cast member -- all beautifully cast and wonderful actors.

He may make moves on Gu Yeija, but doubt she'd be fooled by him. She's way too smart and can spot a sleazeball a mile off :)

Episode 7 - LOVE how they managed to get into his apartment. ROTFL. (Such a fantastic ensemble cast!)

He's so great, isn't he? :) But honestly, I cried during Episode 5 as I felt so sorry for him, because he goes out of his way to help someone but it still backfires on him. Simply because he just can't keep his mouth shut even while he's being kind to someone.

One of best Cdramas I've watched all year. Very funny, all the characters are so relatable, quirky and fun, and the cinematography/set design is super pretty. Love the ML too, as he's actually a very kind, sweet man, but gets himself into trouble with his mouth. 😅 FL too is great. Certainly not a woman you can walk all over. LOL.

Haven't enjoyed a Cdrama this much in months. And made me realize need to quit the wuxias for a while - so many lately have been more of the same, and at 40 eps, so much wasted time. This settles in nicely with the number of episodes too.

Sold on this the minute I realized Kim Mi Kyung was the grandmother - love, love, love her in everything she's been in.

And an amazing cast, Just two eps in so far, but this is fabulous. Both main leads are perfectly cast as well.

Currently playing OSTs from Guardian (LOVE this one), A Dream Within a Dream, Strange Tales of Tang Dynasty (all 3 seasons, all beautiful), Crazy Love (LOVE this one), What's Wrong with Secretary Kim, The Oath of Love, The Princess's Gambit, Descendants of the Sun, Our Blues, Lovely Runner, Alchemy of Souls, Hometown Cha Cha Cha, Who Rules the World, The King's Avatar, Fangs of Fortune, Till the End of the Moon, Winter Begonia, The Untamed, Whispers of Fate, Genie Make a Wish -- and a slew more. All a mix -- some instrumental, some mainly songs.

Plus boatloads of individual songs from other soundtracks.

And don't even get me started on anime/donghua OSTS. I'm beyond help there. LOL - Main ones right now are Heaven Official's Blessing (favorite), The Apothecary Diaries, Mr. Villain's Day Off, The Seven Deadly Sins, sSkaiichi Hatsukoi, No Longer Allowed in Another World and JUJUTSU KAISEN.

Was a radio DJ at an alternative rock station (97X WOXY in Ohio) for 8 years, then a music/entertainment journalist for the last 30 (moved to Austria because of a bearded drag queen singer who won Eurovision Song Contest -- Conchita Wurst :), so even if I hate a drama, I'll still latch onto the OST and become obsessed.

Used to listen to mainly American, British, Austrian and Thai music (lived in Thailand, live in Austria), now it's mainly Chinese, Korean and Japanese, as all I watch is Cdrama, Kdrama and anime/donghua.

Do you have any faves I might have missed? And there's no one genre. I like everything :)

Only 2 episodes in, but LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this so far. Exactly the type of rom-com I like -- interesting characters, a very cool FL, a decent looking intelligent ML with a problem personality (LOL), and super pretty sets. Gorgeous cinematography around Shanghai too.

So happy this one is out. Hope the rest of the episodes are this good.

Drama itself is excellent (although I still think it should have been shorter) so I definitely recommend. But.. if you only wanted to watch it because of Snow Kong, no, no point :)

No. Yang Yu Tong has the most prominent female role. Most of the rest were pretty extraneous and, honestly, I'm not sure we would have missed much if they weren't there? Would have preferred the writer to expand their roles personally but the men in this, including even lower supporting cast members, had more screen time than most of the women. (I think you can see pretty quickly what the writer thinks about women -- pretty accessories who he likes to make strong but then are easily dismissed :) All of the women give superb performances though, so there's that.

I'm the same. The humor in this is a bit sillier than I usually like, but really loved the first 2 episodes. Highly entertaining.

I think the Koreans and the Chinese really excel with drama OSTs. So many are so beautiful, with the Chinese really excelling with orchestral pieces. I have so many of them saved in my YouTube Music library, and play them on repeat often.

Surprising to me, I ended up dropping this from a 10 to an 8.5. Thoroughly enjoyed most of it, thought the performances were excellent and the cinematography/sets are gorgeous. The script was decent enough by the end. Nothing more. Would have been much better if the writing was tighter.

But... like so many Chinese dramas, the last 8 episodes were incredibly draggy as the production team stretched out events just to make more money from advertisers. Chinese audiences have been complaining about it for years. Govt changed the maximum number of episodes allowed because of it but, disappointingly, have recently reversed that decision. So, I'm guessing we can expect a lot more drag coming out of China :(

(And no, I don't have a problem with a long drama (I'm not an 18 year old brought up on 15 second Tik Tok videos :), but the events in this ended up not being complicated or deep enough to warrant so many episodes. Especially the final arc with the lunatic First Prince (long and uninteresting for the most part), and then the last most important event between the two leads being nothing more than an added on footnote. Sadly tho, a too long script is usually the case with a huge number of Chinese dramas -- looooooong but the substance runs out before it ends.

Would watch a second season, but only if I had the last few episodes on double speed. Probably should have done that on this :)

Overall, a good drama and would recommend - especially for the superb cast, IF you don't have the impatience of a flea like I do when events are taking soooooooo long to play out :)

Hahahaha, all very true. Although, in your case, I would have bet on Tippi Hedren too as I grew up in the UK and the Hitchcock film 'The Birds' was a classic we must have watched on the BBC 3 times a year. Always thought it was odd Melanie was her daughter as, IMO, they don't look alike at all. So I definitely understand your Kim Novak bet, LOL.

And no, sorry, no exchange (LOL) I have the best mum in the world, AND she knows not to bet with me on American or international politics (she's great at British politics from the 1940s onwards, but I've lived all over the world including during 2 military coups in Thailand, and she's only managed the UK and the U.S. :). Also, political science ended up being my undergraduate degree from a U.S. university (weird choice, I know, considering I started out in Theater :), so she'd apparently lose out to both of us it seems. Hahahaha. Your mum and your brother sound great tho!

Could be I suppose :)

And mothers. Super annoying isn't it? My dad and I argue with her ALL the time and, then when we check about what we're arguing about, (who was British Prime Minister in 1964, which was the last country where we met my aunt and uncle for a family vacation etc) she ALWAYS ends up being correct.

I don't know why we insist on keep arguing, as we're always wrong -- hahahaha.

Yep. There's nothing wrong with her performance. She's portraying the character well so far. (I even just went back and watched a couple of her scenes again. Nope. She's decent).

Seems to me nothing more than a group of trolls who, apparently, didn't like her performance in another drama so have arrived to attack her here. To the point one person is even attacking her EYEBROWS. (shrug)

Same trolls with sad little lives. Different day :)

EDIT: Btw, drama is doing VERY well in Korea. Just jumped 2 percentage points for Episode 3.

Anyone else rewinding scenes just to oggle the gorgeous sets? :) I have a thing about books too, and when a character is in a library (the Emperor for instance) surrounded by books/scrolls, I rewind about 6 times just to check out the beautifully-designed shelves. I think it's a fetish LOL.

Believe me, I'm not always right about a lot of things :) That's my mother, and she's surpremely annoying because she actually IS always right - ROTFL.

I just think I am here as, right from the first minutes of Ep 1, my years-long-trained intuition for a good performance or not was screaming "What the HELL? Why is the acting so exaggerated?" then I saw several Chinese viewers asking a similar thing. So realized it wasn't just me :)

Now, I think MY acting skills are only average. Hence, why I decided not to make a career out of it - LOL. But I'm pretty good at spotting inauthentic performances and they're all over this Season. (AGAIN, still loving it tho!