GG Precinct (2024)

I kind of expected more and better

I have really conflicted feelings about this series.

I really dislike the fact that Marry My Dead Body is acknowledged for a minute into the first episode to set the universe and then disappears from collective memory baring one single reference line. I'm not one to ask for references everywhere, a spin-off has to live on its own, but there it truly feels like they marketed it as a sequel/spin-off just to use 2 or 3 characters again and be done with it.

I actually enjoyed watching again the character of Wu Ming Han, he was great in Marry My Dead Body and continues to work his magic in GG Precinct, to the point where I think he's the one carrying this series. But at the same time he really doesn't have a lot of screen time which is a bit disconcerting for someone supposed to be the male lead. By making it a sort of team drama, they basically took what was the main force of the movie and toned it down to promote what was weak. Lin Zi Qing does not succeed at all to impose herself but rather annoys by her character, and the sidekicks, who are some sort of unfunny comedic relief inside a comedy, are both useless and omnipresent. There's a start of narrative arc with the junkie cop, but it goes nowhere. The villains take far too much time and one of them comes from absolutely nowhere, they just popped up.

The story itself is a bit bland. When they introduce the idioms murderer, you'd think the crime spree would be over after 2 or 3 episodes. But no, it goes on for 6 episodes straight and given the ending, it will probably continue in a potential second part if renewed. The crime story is a boring language lesson, and it's one of the biggest problems of GG Precinct: it feels like a weird private joke among connoisseurs of sinograms. Which makes it really hard to get into for foreign ignorants like myself.

For the comedic aspect, it's basically wacky and over the top humour, which as far as I'm concerned, only works with Wu Ming Han and is, for a series which basically has the running time of a 3 hours movie, really scarce.

I would recommend to watch it in one evening straight if you have nothing else to watch. If you're coming from Marry My Dead Body, you wouldn't miss much not watching it.

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Drama that provokes mixed opinions

I'm honestly not sure if I liked this show or not. As probably everyone else, I came here for Kuanghan and stuck till the end for him, so in a way, it wasn't a waste of my time. He was as great as always, and seeing his charming Wu Minghan again was very fun to watch too. Though I don't know if this is my bias talking, but I feel like he didn't have that much screen time considering he is listed as the ML.

But anyway, the story was okay. It was interesting enough to keep me watching till the end, but there's still something I'm not sure what it is that didn't let me enjoy it fully. There aren't many comments and no other reviews to help me put into words what I felt watching it, so I will have to try to figure it out later.

The FL's rushed background did its job to show the viewer why she acts the way she does, so I guess it was also not unwelcome. Her bickering with Minghan was also fun to watch, especially because of the tiny hint that they could like each other. But I still didn't fully like her.

The other leads and extended cast were also okay, but I think the reason why I didn't exactly like this show and the characters was its grotesque nature. And no, I don't mean the gore scenes of the murders and corpses. I'm actually fine watching those. Funnily enough, the junkie cop clipping his nails at the precinct made me more uncomfortable than all the killings and corpse shots. I guess that's the purpose of this kind of shows, but maybe that's why this one didn't work for me.

Plot-wise it was also just okay. Someone said that you enjoy it more if you speak Chinese (I suppose to understand the idioms and mistakes better). But since my Chinese is very limited, I can't really form an opinion about this. But I liked the fact that the story was cohesive and it was well resolved. I mean, there wasn't much more to resolve, but it at least made sense till the end.

Anyway, I think overall it's not the worse show you'll ever watch, but it's also nothing remarkable. It's just an okay show. If you're coming for Kuanghan, you'll definitely have some of your time's worth back. But if you're looking for something random to watch, I'd say just skip it because there are many other better things to spend your time watching.

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