Omega68537

Also try An Ancient Love Song(Historical drava with some Xuanhuan elements). It is pretty unknown outside mainland China and not particularly hot at home as it is exclusive to Bilibili and requires subscription, but you won't regret watching it.

The practice of adding meaningless fillers was way too common then, ruining way too many dramas, or the government would not do this. Another rationale is: More often than not, great dramas have only about a dozen episodes or two(but the episodes can be longer than 1h).

The Double is too controversial to win any award

Go for Angels Fall Sometimes, another drama of excellent acting. But be prepared to cry all the time after ep10-like if you decide to watch it

Who are the "couple of others"?

Yeah, that's the pity. A example is Love Like the Galaxy(56 eps) which had to split into two parts(it originally had 66 eps but the prodecer had to remove 10). Blossoms in Adversity is an example of how the restricted length can negatively affect the quality. With 40 eps it's already very fast-pased and the last 5-10 eps are excessively fast-pased which led to negative reviews. (According to the screenwriters of BiA they had to compress the plot to limit the length).

Dramas of that length were the norm those days, even for those who do not necessarily need that many episodes to tell the story. This is because the producers add meaningless fillers or deliberately make it sluggish to increase the number of episodes so the drama can be sold at a higher price. This is the reason why the number of episodes is capped at 40 (45 min per episode). It's still possible to have more than 40 episodes but illustration of its necessity is required.