The Story of Yanxi Palace

[azdak]

The Story of Yanxi Palace is that rare beast, a historical c-drama that puts women, their lives and their relationships with other women front and centre and expects you to be interested.

Comments

[sartorias]

There are a few others where relations between the women, including servants, are the focus. Court Lady is that way for the most part, but unfortunately it bridged the summary judgment that series cannot be over a certain number, so it was ruthlessly, even madly chopped, so that the end is nearly incoherent. But what we have is fascinating, and again, many familiar faces, such as Xiao Jingrui as a wicked eunuch!

[azdak]

That's such a shame about Court Lady. An incoherent ending is a very poor reward for sitting through 70 episodes! I have to admit that I never felt the actor playing Jingrui had the right face for the part - a wicked eunuch seems (to me) a much better role for him.

[sartorias]

I think it was meant to be 70 episodes, but then the government clomped in and it was whacked down to 54, I think, or thereabouts. Brutally whacked. There are shards of good stuff, and the velocity did carry me through, but it was a real shame to see such hard work ruined.

And I really hate to think about Young Lin Shu whacked out of NIF.

[azdak]

The whole Zhang Zhehan unpersoning thing is frankly terrifying.

[sallymn]

I must add this to my list of 'wanna watch'... thanks!

I have current downloaded a couple of Chinese and one, ummm, Russian series to watch in my {cough} copious free time.

[azdak]

What else is on your "wanna watch" list? I'm always in search of recommendations, especially now I've seen most of the real classics. And what's the Russian series? I got heavily into 17 Moments of Spring back in the day, so perhaps something long and Russian would be a good alternative to things long and Chinese/Korean.

[sallymn]

Nirvana in Fire, Joy of LIfe and The Imperial Coroner from China :) We'll see how I go.

The Russian one (I must do a post) is called Detective Anna or Anna the Detective and isn't exactly brilliant TV - police/ghosts/historical/romance/etc all thrown in together, rather low budget (and a lot of the budget went on Anna's admittedly lovely wardrobe, NOT the ghostly SFX) but there's something about it that I just like in a guilty pleasure sort of way, and the actress playing Anna is really appealling.

[azdak]

Oh dear, I've seen NiF (several times) and Joy of Life and I bounced off Imperial Coroner (it's icky about eunuchs, who if you ask me have every reason to be secretly rebellious), so it will have to be Detective Anna!