3
8
1
This review may contain spoilers
An unusual dark chinese series...
When I first watched I could not distinguish between the actors of this series and "Deep In". If you would swap the actors the story could have been told exactly the same, because the couples look sooooo similar. While every episode is only 30 to 35 minutes long, it does not feel rushed and it avoids the boring idle time of many series.
We have a story of two disfunctional families. And then we also have a couple which borrowed an imho typical japanese theme of "miscommunication". While we have a cold and a docil character both have hidden traits. And both do not communicate at all. Because this is a very dark story, watching it may make you uncomfortable which is of course intended. We have character growth through the series. Rich families daddy is a honorable man doing his utter most to protect his family and their names because the higher on the social ladder you are the more it matters. Poor family mom wants of course climb the social ladder, but realizes all her wrongs. At least she does not fall into the pit of greed as her husband and other son.
It's also a story of two families circumstances bond together. One to save their names and one to climb said social ladder. As it is with every fairy tale, greed will be your doom. Our docile guy has a plan to ruin his lover which he loves and hates at the same time. His lover on the other hand acted mostly cold except when his desire overwhelmed him, but in the end he can't escape him, because his love for him is so much stronger than every hurt he did receive.
A special shoutout for the set designers who did find all the stuff from the 90ties which needed to work, be it CRT TVs, discmans, dvd players, cars and tons of old PCs. There is so much detail in every scene, I have never seen that in a series without a huge budget. I can't of course not know how much budget they had, but I doubt it can compete with Hollywood at all. This is also a reason why my rating is higher compared to the story rating. Also the costumes matched the times and in the short scenes where you see a lot of people going to work for example, they did style all of the people accordingly.
The actors/actresses did an outstanding job imho. Not only the MC but everyone involved did a really good job. I can't complain at all. This was superb. I'm happy that the MC already has filmed another series which will be hopefully released this year and they did deserve that.
While dark, this is not an ordinary series. It's a story about family, greed and miscommunication. And because it's a fairy tale we get the punishment for the guilty parties and an happy end we always expect. This series is of course not fluffy at all, it's partly painful to watch but it's for sure not the common stuff you see everyday. The final scene of course is part of the fairy tale, because that would not have happened IRL (at that time). Also they did mix up Portugal with Spain, either in the script or the translation which was a bit weird. At least as european you can distinguish between spanish and portugese languages. But besides this minor lapse, I like it and recommand it. You should give it a chance.
We have a story of two disfunctional families. And then we also have a couple which borrowed an imho typical japanese theme of "miscommunication". While we have a cold and a docil character both have hidden traits. And both do not communicate at all. Because this is a very dark story, watching it may make you uncomfortable which is of course intended. We have character growth through the series. Rich families daddy is a honorable man doing his utter most to protect his family and their names because the higher on the social ladder you are the more it matters. Poor family mom wants of course climb the social ladder, but realizes all her wrongs. At least she does not fall into the pit of greed as her husband and other son.
It's also a story of two families circumstances bond together. One to save their names and one to climb said social ladder. As it is with every fairy tale, greed will be your doom. Our docile guy has a plan to ruin his lover which he loves and hates at the same time. His lover on the other hand acted mostly cold except when his desire overwhelmed him, but in the end he can't escape him, because his love for him is so much stronger than every hurt he did receive.
A special shoutout for the set designers who did find all the stuff from the 90ties which needed to work, be it CRT TVs, discmans, dvd players, cars and tons of old PCs. There is so much detail in every scene, I have never seen that in a series without a huge budget. I can't of course not know how much budget they had, but I doubt it can compete with Hollywood at all. This is also a reason why my rating is higher compared to the story rating. Also the costumes matched the times and in the short scenes where you see a lot of people going to work for example, they did style all of the people accordingly.
The actors/actresses did an outstanding job imho. Not only the MC but everyone involved did a really good job. I can't complain at all. This was superb. I'm happy that the MC already has filmed another series which will be hopefully released this year and they did deserve that.
While dark, this is not an ordinary series. It's a story about family, greed and miscommunication. And because it's a fairy tale we get the punishment for the guilty parties and an happy end we always expect. This series is of course not fluffy at all, it's partly painful to watch but it's for sure not the common stuff you see everyday. The final scene of course is part of the fairy tale, because that would not have happened IRL (at that time). Also they did mix up Portugal with Spain, either in the script or the translation which was a bit weird. At least as european you can distinguish between spanish and portugese languages. But besides this minor lapse, I like it and recommand it. You should give it a chance.
Was this review helpful to you?
