The propaganda is so in your face with this one, but I’ll power through for swl let’s see if it’s worth…
There was quite a bit of state propaganda in this one. Interesting to me from my far off place is that the 3 Zhao Jin Mai dramas I have viewed all contained a fair amount of propaganda.
Some of us recently got together and viewed 3 of her dramas. She is fantastic. Both the men and women who watched agreed she is a great talent, and has commanding screen presence on top of her being very attractive.
We watched: - Shine On Me - The Princess Royal - Amidst A Snowstorm of Love
We rate Shine on Me and The Princess Royal equally about 8.6-8.7 and Amidst A Snowstorm of Love about 8.0 - all are good ratings in our opinion. We just felt the first 2 superior for the dramatic impact they had on us as well as the overall qualitative aspects of the drama.
We focused on the adult dramas she has performed in the genres we like. We probably will watch Our Generation but some of her earlier more youth oriented dramas are not really to our taste.
I think Zhao Jin Mai will have a long successful career. And we happily enjoy her future acting performances.
Enjoying so far. Its rolling along and keeping us guessing.
Nice to see Park Joo Hee back on the screen. I fee like we have not really seen much of her since her great role as the Lieutenant in Happiness. I only wish her role in Filing For Love was more significant.
Nice cameo by Lee Jung Eun in Ep 3.
Something looks different about Kim Jae Uck. I don't know what it is and perhaps it is because his actual last movie I viewed just recently was Her Private Life which in actuality was filmed 8 yrs ago and so his appearance then to now has of course changed.
They have done very little with Hong Hwa Yeon's character so far. I know she comes from a modeling background but she has demonstrated reasonable acting ability in past roles. I am only finished to Ep 3 and I don't want to spoil but I thought she might be the younger femme fatale and maybe that is still her role. She does play a very calm and collected person so far but her character does seem to be underdeveloped.
Shin Hae Sun has been hit and miss for me in the past but so far this role is "hit" and rather than miss. Likewise I feel this is going well for Gong Myung - he is really playing the straight role very well. I don't in my mind see them as a couple yet I can tell from what I have viewed the writing is foreshadowing they getting together.
what do you rate this drama movie on a scale from 0-10
I think approx in the 8 range. Its a romance melodrama with deliberate slow pacing and an emphasis on the leads interaction with each other to lay out the story. It is not going to be everyone's cup of tea especially due to the ending.
That is an incredible result for Honour given how small ENA marketshare is on pay for cable. If it continues with these ratings it will be in the top 5 all time for the network.
A reminder for anyone in North, Central or South America that Honour streams legally on Amasian.tv streaming service. They are a US based competitor to Viki in the Americas and purchased the streaming rights to ENA's entire library. You can watch online but they also have an app for every major platform - android, apple, roku, etc.
Honour is available throughout North, Central and South America on Amasian.tv which is a streaming platform that competes with Viki in those regions. It is how I am watching the series.
Sunday ratings were even higher: 11.8% national and 12.3% Seoul. Its audience share has risen approx 350% nationally from episode 1 to episode 14 as good word of mouth spread about this show. And 400% in Seoul.
That is a commendable performance. I feel the final 2 episodes are going to perform even better.
UMH is a pretty complex 16 episode show. I was always curious as to whether a drama this complex and with its unusual genres of comedy combined with crime/thriller would be a winner. Great to see some of us still have a brain!
I could easily understand fans shipping Yang Yang and Zhao Lu Si - they were magical together.
Zhao Lu Si impressed me in this drama. Its hard to believe it actually pre-dates Hidden Love. She seems to be a very versatile actress. And she is very beautiful in this drama - as an aside we noticed how straight her posture and carriage are when she stands.
As I am fairly new to cdrama I did not have a lot of familiarity with Yang Yang. I will definitely be looking to view more of his content.
Lulu Xuan aka Xuan Lu has a couple of my single friends lusting after her and with good reason. She has a great role here playing a strong, intelligent senior politician and family leader.
As others mentioned a refreshing aspect of this drama is that the writers resisted the temptation to make the 2 women enemies.
The other main and supporting cast are all deserving of acclaim. She has not gotten much mention in the comments that I reviewed but Carman Lee really nailed it as Madame Bai Li and really incited the hate in me for that character. Great job on her part.
I just finished Love Between A Fairy and Devil and I am a bit stunned. It was superb. I honestly did not expect it to be nearly as good as it was.
Yu Shu Xin (Esther Yu) was incomparable. Masterful performance delivered by her.
But the entire cast impressed me. I felt there were no missteps in the casting and acting.
We had love, unrequited love, a love triangle, revenge, body swapping and almost every other drama trope that I usually abhor, yet in this drama they did not feel tropey and instead of being annoyed I continued from one episode to the next in anticipation of where the stories were headed.
Something I appreciated was that for the genre of drama it was short at 36 episodes. Almost everyone of them felt concise with little wasted time spent on trying to drag out the series which we have so often witnessed in some of the much longer Xianxia type dramas.
The current overall rating of 8.7 here on mydramalist (Feb 2026) is a bit of a travesty IMHO. It is easily 8.9-9.0 quality. I suppose it got hit by some of the anti-Ester fans which is unfortunate. There is nothing to fault on her part in this show.
which is a legal streaming provider based in the United States and has a license agreement with ENA. First 2 episodes are online. I think it is available worldwide and they have an app which you can install on your smart TV and then you access it directly, or you just go to the url in your computer browser of course.
I thought the 2 initial episodes were outstanding.
Your likely mature beyond your years in character! (A good thing). It truly is an adult drama but its great to hear that some younger people got into the issues the drama explores as well as the romance between adults.
I wrote a review of this show. The women in the show were fantastic but the writing and direction were abysmal and the male parts were dreadful. When Gong Seung Yeon was in the actual "journeys" the show shined brightly. Outside the journeys the other scenes were mostly quite cringe.
The network and showrunners also "sold" to the public that the show was a romance drama. But it was not. Kim Jae Young's scenes were minor and has acting bland - it was very clearly a payday and nothing more and that is how he acted it.
She was in The Judge From Hell (Fall 2024) after Doctor Slump (filmed in 2023 released Jan 2024. Did you miss…
The male lead is Kim Jae Yeong and he is not a very good actor at the best of times - he really built his career on the male androgynous poser method. But his role in TJFH is actually fairly minor. The focus of the episodes is Park Shin Hye, and she has a "team" from hell and they are very funny and have much more screen time vs the male lead.
Really this is a one lead show and everyone else is a supporting role. She carries it fully and you would enjoy it.
We watched:
- Shine On Me
- The Princess Royal
- Amidst A Snowstorm of Love
We rate Shine on Me and The Princess Royal equally about 8.6-8.7 and Amidst A Snowstorm of Love about 8.0 - all are good ratings in our opinion. We just felt the first 2 superior for the dramatic impact they had on us as well as the overall qualitative aspects of the drama.
We focused on the adult dramas she has performed in the genres we like. We probably will watch Our Generation but some of her earlier more youth oriented dramas are not really to our taste.
I think Zhao Jin Mai will have a long successful career. And we happily enjoy her future acting performances.
Nice to see Park Joo Hee back on the screen. I fee like we have not really seen much of her since her great role as the Lieutenant in Happiness. I only wish her role in Filing For Love was more significant.
Nice cameo by Lee Jung Eun in Ep 3.
Something looks different about Kim Jae Uck. I don't know what it is and perhaps it is because his actual last movie I viewed just recently was Her Private Life which in actuality was filmed 8 yrs ago and so his appearance then to now has of course changed.
They have done very little with Hong Hwa Yeon's character so far. I know she comes from a modeling background but she has demonstrated reasonable acting ability in past roles. I am only finished to Ep 3 and I don't want to spoil but I thought she might be the younger femme fatale and maybe that is still her role. She does play a very calm and collected person so far but her character does seem to be underdeveloped.
Shin Hae Sun has been hit and miss for me in the past but so far this role is "hit" and rather than miss. Likewise I feel this is going well for Gong Myung - he is really playing the straight role very well. I don't in my mind see them as a couple yet I can tell from what I have viewed the writing is foreshadowing they getting together.
A reminder for anyone in North, Central or South America that Honour streams legally on Amasian.tv streaming service. They are a US based competitor to Viki in the Americas and purchased the streaming rights to ENA's entire library. You can watch online but they also have an app for every major platform - android, apple, roku, etc.
That is a commendable performance. I feel the final 2 episodes are going to perform even better.
UMH is a pretty complex 16 episode show. I was always curious as to whether a drama this complex and with its unusual genres of comedy combined with crime/thriller would be a winner. Great to see some of us still have a brain!
Zhao Lu Si impressed me in this drama. Its hard to believe it actually pre-dates Hidden Love. She seems to be a very versatile actress. And she is very beautiful in this drama - as an aside we noticed how straight her posture and carriage are when she stands.
As I am fairly new to cdrama I did not have a lot of familiarity with Yang Yang. I will definitely be looking to view more of his content.
Lulu Xuan aka Xuan Lu has a couple of my single friends lusting after her and with good reason. She has a great role here playing a strong, intelligent senior politician and family leader.
As others mentioned a refreshing aspect of this drama is that the writers resisted the temptation to make the 2 women enemies.
The other main and supporting cast are all deserving of acclaim. She has not gotten much mention in the comments that I reviewed but Carman Lee really nailed it as Madame Bai Li and really incited the hate in me for that character. Great job on her part.
I gave this a 9.5 out of 10.
Yu Shu Xin (Esther Yu) was incomparable. Masterful performance delivered by her.
But the entire cast impressed me. I felt there were no missteps in the casting and acting.
We had love, unrequited love, a love triangle, revenge, body swapping and almost every other drama trope that I usually abhor, yet in this drama they did not feel tropey and instead of being annoyed I continued from one episode to the next in anticipation of where the stories were headed.
Something I appreciated was that for the genre of drama it was short at 36 episodes. Almost everyone of them felt concise with little wasted time spent on trying to drag out the series which we have so often witnessed in some of the much longer Xianxia type dramas.
The current overall rating of 8.7 here on mydramalist (Feb 2026) is a bit of a travesty IMHO. It is easily 8.9-9.0 quality. I suppose it got hit by some of the anti-Ester fans which is unfortunate. There is nothing to fault on her part in this show.
https://amasian.tv
which is a legal streaming provider based in the United States and has a license agreement with ENA. First 2 episodes are online. I think it is available worldwide and they have an app which you can install on your smart TV and then you access it directly, or you just go to the url in your computer browser of course.
I thought the 2 initial episodes were outstanding.
The network and showrunners also "sold" to the public that the show was a romance drama. But it was not. Kim Jae Young's scenes were minor and has acting bland - it was very clearly a payday and nothing more and that is how he acted it.
Really this is a one lead show and everyone else is a supporting role. She carries it fully and you would enjoy it.
This show and UnderCover Miss Hong starting the day before plus Spring Fever already running has caused my evenings to jam up.