Romance, mystery, and macabre
What a journey I’ve been on as I watched this drama. Truly a brilliant show—acted, directed, written, and produced with excellence.
Pros:
* The romance — Very rarely do you find a couple like this. For one, our actors were brilliant and their chemistry was fire! They were so at ease with a multitude of kisses. Secondly, they are committed to each other. Totally and completely. No messy breakup or miscommunication. When they decide to be together in episode 16, they never—and I mean NEVER—go back on their word to fight side by side for justice. If you love Song Mo and Dou Zhao in “Blossom”, you’ll love Yan Chi and Shen Wan in “The Coroner’s Diary”
* The leads — I already know I love Ao Rui Peng, but I was new to Landi Li. They killed it! Their acting was just plain phenomenal. More than that, these characters were written phenomenally. Shen Wan is a FL for the history books. Drama writers, take notes. She is strong, brilliant, determined, just, and loyal. Yan Chi? Drama writers, take notes again. He is brave, resilient, protective, kind, and fiercely in love. Class one green flag.
* The writing — Very rarely I have I been able to finish an ancient historical detective drama. This one, though? It was top tier. The cases are so intricate, and the overarching political plot ended up being absolutely mind blowing.
* Production — The costumes will blow you away. The makeup will too. The OST? Excellent. The sets? Excellent. The action scenes? Excellent.
Cons:
* Gore galore — I love American cop shows so I didn’t expect to be a wuss when I watched this. I was not prepared for the level of gore that would accompany some of these murders. There were five murders in particular where I could barely handle looking at the body. There’s a serial killer arc in the second half that left me almost nauseous with how brutal the murders were. Violence, in general, is perhaps abnormally abundant for a romance drama, especially in the last half.
* Pacing issues — Typically in the Chinese mystery shows, a case will be wrapped up in two to three episodes. This one averages about five episodes per case, with every case having more than one murder involved. This lowkey annoyed me because I often was more than ready to move to the next case, but they’d just kill off someone else and it would drag out another episode.
* This last one is just an opinion thing so I won’t even call it a full con, but I think we deserved to flesh out our ML’s past much more. We got way more screen time of FL than the ML, which is fine, but the ML’s backstory ends up being integral to the main plot and so the fact that we barely see any of it kinda felt unfinished to me.
Overall, I get the hype for this show. “The Coroner’s Diary” is one of the best Chinese dramas I’ve watched this year. Definitely recommend.
Pros:
* The romance — Very rarely do you find a couple like this. For one, our actors were brilliant and their chemistry was fire! They were so at ease with a multitude of kisses. Secondly, they are committed to each other. Totally and completely. No messy breakup or miscommunication. When they decide to be together in episode 16, they never—and I mean NEVER—go back on their word to fight side by side for justice. If you love Song Mo and Dou Zhao in “Blossom”, you’ll love Yan Chi and Shen Wan in “The Coroner’s Diary”
* The leads — I already know I love Ao Rui Peng, but I was new to Landi Li. They killed it! Their acting was just plain phenomenal. More than that, these characters were written phenomenally. Shen Wan is a FL for the history books. Drama writers, take notes. She is strong, brilliant, determined, just, and loyal. Yan Chi? Drama writers, take notes again. He is brave, resilient, protective, kind, and fiercely in love. Class one green flag.
* The writing — Very rarely I have I been able to finish an ancient historical detective drama. This one, though? It was top tier. The cases are so intricate, and the overarching political plot ended up being absolutely mind blowing.
* Production — The costumes will blow you away. The makeup will too. The OST? Excellent. The sets? Excellent. The action scenes? Excellent.
Cons:
* Gore galore — I love American cop shows so I didn’t expect to be a wuss when I watched this. I was not prepared for the level of gore that would accompany some of these murders. There were five murders in particular where I could barely handle looking at the body. There’s a serial killer arc in the second half that left me almost nauseous with how brutal the murders were. Violence, in general, is perhaps abnormally abundant for a romance drama, especially in the last half.
* Pacing issues — Typically in the Chinese mystery shows, a case will be wrapped up in two to three episodes. This one averages about five episodes per case, with every case having more than one murder involved. This lowkey annoyed me because I often was more than ready to move to the next case, but they’d just kill off someone else and it would drag out another episode.
* This last one is just an opinion thing so I won’t even call it a full con, but I think we deserved to flesh out our ML’s past much more. We got way more screen time of FL than the ML, which is fine, but the ML’s backstory ends up being integral to the main plot and so the fact that we barely see any of it kinda felt unfinished to me.
Overall, I get the hype for this show. “The Coroner’s Diary” is one of the best Chinese dramas I’ve watched this year. Definitely recommend.
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