Skibbies

Chiming in, for historical adventure drama, try Young Blood, not fantasy though, original script from scriptwriter of SSS and JoL.

If you like tomb raiding, candle in the tomb should definitely be right up your alley, the author basically invented the genre. I specifically rec 2015 movie (semi original story), 2016 series (book 1) and lost caverns (book 2). This year's worm valley follows it but I found it lacking tbh, still watachable though. Wrath of time is book 7 but it's a prequel set in 1930s or so, I haven't seen it, it has decent reviews but there's some minor issues to my knowledge. You can safely skip the rest.

Eagles & Youngster is by the same author and had decent reviews too. Tientsin Mystic which is more mystery with psychic twist is by the same author and have very interesting feel to it, I had issues with s1's plot veering off towards the end though, I liked s2 lot more.

The action is largely newbie director + newbie action director issue IMO, I think latter episodes action scenes are lot better though. The drama is probably one of the biggest of the year for tencent, definitely the most hype, so I have a lot of questions about its choices (like all the newbie staff, fl casting choice, initial two episodes pacing) but hey what's done is done.

The schedule was determined at the start, the current schedule is actually better for SSS, since cctv 8 isn't quite loving the drama judging by the initial few days' ratings. The drama in the prime time slow is actually doing surprisingly well which helps tv ratings for this drama.

tRoP also have pacing issue IMO, and lot of people just couldn't get into the show (director + writer issue). Chen Kun's casting choice is largely due to his face and aura (morally grey) while ZRY is just not. Bluntly speaking, these book fans are upset that ZRY is playing another super handsome character when they think he's not handsome. I personally have little issue with him playing the role and think he's doing fine. Fandom will use all kinds of things to put down dramas/actors they don't like, the only way to win is to do well on all fronts, which is pretty hard.

People expected another JoL hit, it's riding off JoL's success as well, and it's not quite meeting the expectations. It's doing fine viewcount wise, but people just expected more, the tv ratings have been so so too, I hope it'll do better later.

it's not one viewer, it's ALL the book fans lmao. people made mvs from tRoP scenes to fit this story LOL.

The action scene criticism is actually pretty vital, since they've been promoting the drama as wuxia and people expect old school Jin Yong (I honestly feel like it's more a scheming drama with xuanhuan elements), so action scenes are central. I think the most damning thing is initial pacing.

they haven't filmed s2, i think it's dependent on how s1 does (it's ok so far), JOL took a while cos there was no script, then i think it's gathering the huge veteran cast + busy director + getting investment, it's rumoured to start filming in Q1. Anyways, it's like this mostly cos they hired the same guy to do scripts for three high profile IPs that should all take about 2 or 3 seasons lol + he had his original script that had a second half.

the initial filming license was 50, it was never 60, it's unclear if they even filmed that many episodes.

they didn't film multiple seasons, there's plans for more seasons but it's probably dependent on how well received it is. my heroic husband says season 1 too and got season 2 announced several months later cos it was popular

omg idk what the director is doing, why does vengo look like that?! he looks pretty good in his currently filming drama

He lost them after his wife gave birth I think? lol. His cameo in My Heroic Husband was filmed at the same time as this, so he looks skinny there too.

in about 20mins, 2 ep non vip, 4 ep vip (6 ep in total) for tencent domestically. tomorrow till monday there's 2 ep per day, then after that it's an ep a day, wetv should follow similar schedule.

To be fair, Wu Zetian is meant to be 65+ here LOL, she looks too young to be honest, but her presence makes up for it.

Yeah I can see what they were going with with that name, but unwelcome well worked fine, so switching it to ghetto just made it extra jarring,

I didn't know either, I just heard fellow drama watchers complaining about the switch so I was like oh no why

i'm not over switching from unwelcome well to ghetto, who thought that was a good idea? Four Seasons Divine sounds like a hotel to me lol.

hey hey, bringing out Yongzheng Dynasty is just unfair, it'd destroy Nirvana in Fire easily, let alone a messily executed mystery drama like this.

I think the execution got bit better later but maybe cos they stopped spinning so much during the action scenes helped.

For historical, I think this is it. There's rumour that Chen Kun's For the Win might air on 21st though. Hunan TV have a Zhou Xun drama airing, I probably won't watch it but I'm following its stats and it's looking awesome, follow up (Jan 3rd) is either Chen Xiao & WYB's narcotics cop drama or Yu Zheng's historical about food (on the one hand Yu Zheng, on the other, historical and food drama mhm).

There aren't that many historical dramas I'm looking forward to next year actually, tencent stopped making so many expensive dramas, Youku's look...questionable, iqiyi's still look good, but I only remember like two of them so there's just not many.

I'm on ep 16, there's probably lot of time for me to watch before it ends, so I don't really actively participate in discussing since I'm always smidge behind. I should be up to date when it comes to SSS though!! There are so many big dramas coming out this month oh my god. Platforms and tv stations, if you need your kpi, consider airing your shows from october onwards!!

wow rude!! lol, I'm behind by few episodes and started Delicious Romance to tide me over till SSS release