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Fresh Take on Time-Travel
This was a fun one-time watch with a fresh take on time-travel. The premise: not just one person, but a whole family, gets transported to ancient times, where they make a livelihood by opening a restaurant using modern cooking methods and marketing strategies.
The family is your typical sitcom variety — level-headed mom, clueless dad, lazy brother, precocious little sister. Some of the characters can lean toward caricatures at times, but the leads — played by Wang Ying Lu and Li Yun Rui — hold things together.
Wang Ying Lu as the female lead is smart, resourceful, conveniently a history buff, and pretty much single-handedly keeps her family alive in their unfamiliar environment. Her sensitive performance — enhanced by an expressive face and big, bright eyes — give the character some needed emotional gravitas in contrast with her loud and chaotic family members.
The male lead is a successful but lonely young official who ends up entangled with the Shen family, who he believes to be his relatives. He’s serious and stoic, but carries a lot of emotional baggage, and Li Yun Rui plays the character’s grief and heartbreak with a quiet devastation that’s compelling to watch.
Viewers should also be on the lookout for some lovely sets (particularly the ML’s manor) and costumes. There are scenes where the camera pulls back to linger on a meaningful moment that look like they could be paintings.
In terms of genre, it’s mostly comedy with a bit of romance and a political intrigue / revenge plot. The ending, as is typical in this kind of story, is a bit contrived in order to reconcile the past and current timelines, but it’s a happy one and handled better than most dramas I’ve seen of this type.
The family is your typical sitcom variety — level-headed mom, clueless dad, lazy brother, precocious little sister. Some of the characters can lean toward caricatures at times, but the leads — played by Wang Ying Lu and Li Yun Rui — hold things together.
Wang Ying Lu as the female lead is smart, resourceful, conveniently a history buff, and pretty much single-handedly keeps her family alive in their unfamiliar environment. Her sensitive performance — enhanced by an expressive face and big, bright eyes — give the character some needed emotional gravitas in contrast with her loud and chaotic family members.
The male lead is a successful but lonely young official who ends up entangled with the Shen family, who he believes to be his relatives. He’s serious and stoic, but carries a lot of emotional baggage, and Li Yun Rui plays the character’s grief and heartbreak with a quiet devastation that’s compelling to watch.
Viewers should also be on the lookout for some lovely sets (particularly the ML’s manor) and costumes. There are scenes where the camera pulls back to linger on a meaningful moment that look like they could be paintings.
In terms of genre, it’s mostly comedy with a bit of romance and a political intrigue / revenge plot. The ending, as is typical in this kind of story, is a bit contrived in order to reconcile the past and current timelines, but it’s a happy one and handled better than most dramas I’ve seen of this type.
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