I once told 99 truths and no one believed me. But the one lie I told, they all believed it.
I recently finished watching the superlative Taiwanese drama and I must recommend it. It's absolutely incredible and best of all, masterful in its storytelling. This show made me believe that Taiwanese drama could be something more than fluffy (and often formulaic) romantic comedies. That's always been part of my problem with Taiwanese dramas in that most seem to consist of sticking an attractive male lead with an attractive female lead and plugging them into a paper thin rom-com storyline -- when this works, it's awesome such as the standout and gold standard in Asian romantic comedies "It Started With A Kiss" which is probably the best rom-com Asian drama out there, but more often the formula fails. "Bump Off Lover" is very different from the usual Taiwanese drama fare and the only thing I can liken it to is an Asian Twin Peaks only without the offputting Lynchian obsessions. I watched BOL recently and it took over my brain -- even when I wasn't watching it, I found myself thinking about whodunit; I think the show does an especially excellent job making everyone seem incredibly suspicious without it feeling unnatural, forced, or too over the top. The pacing is great too, the latter half of the series is a real heart-pounder; you want to skip ahead to find out the identity of the killer but you don't because the show is so great and nuanced that you don't want to miss a moment.
The storytelling is genius; it seems labyrinthic at first but as the show races along, you see how tight and lean and smart it is because pieces start falling into place and as the viewer you realize that things you saw before were not actually what you believed them to be. That is one of my absolute favorite storytelling devices, although it's hard to do successfully; showing the viewer all the chess pieces but presenting it in a way that gives the illusion that white is black and black is white.
The acting is fantastic as well, given that most of the cast were virtual unknowns when the show came out. All the relationships are complex and realistic with great psychological depth.
Probably the most appealing aspect of the show, for me, is the overarching theme that went even beyond the mystery that is the premise of the show. I love how the heart of the show is the theme that no matter how well you think you know someone, how long you've known the person and how close you are to the person, you can never truly know or understand someone else. How all of us are our own separate worlds and no one can fully grasp and understand another person's heart and mind.
I truly think "Bump Off Lover" is one of the best Asian dramas I've seen, and I've seen a lot. You can watch it HERE.
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