any good TV series recently?

[Lu]

Just finished 漫长的季节, wow this was good. Good story, mystery paced out very well, interesting characters, good acting (none of that reading the subtitles out loud), good production values.

 

The whole thing is on Youtube and the English subtitles for most episodes are good, and for a few they are extremely bad. Fortunately it also has Chinese subtitles.

[abcdefg]

On 8/8/2024 at 3:26 PM, Lu said:

Just finished 漫长的季节, wow this was good.

 

Agree! I watched it a few months ago and really enjoyed it too! 

[lordsuso]

Here are three shows that I recommend:

 

成吉思汗 (2004, #episodes: 30): Beautiful costumes, yurts and horses. There are lots of characters with similar names and outfits so it's quite hard to follow, and the language is not easy. I recommend it mostly for the horses and battles, the second half of the show where the khan goes international is very epic. Also, the show is generally praised for being historically accurate and I didn't perceive any pro-China bias.

 

河西走廊 (2015, #episodes: 10): A documentary that tells the story of the 河西走廊 silk-road region (in today's Gansu) throughout the years (with some omissions, like the initial conquest of Xinjiang?). My favorite episodes were 1 and 2, which describe how the emperor 汉武帝 of the 西汉 dynasty sent the explorer 张骞 to traverse the region in order to find allies against the 匈奴 nomads. I also liked episode 9, telling the story of the European explorer Bento de Góis, whose mission was to prove whether China and Cathay were the same country.

山海情 (2021, #episodes: 23): Based on the 吊庄移民 poverty-alleviation program. The inter-personal plots are not very interesting, the main appeal is to watch the evolution of the village. The two actors that play Defu and Shuihua are terrific. I wasn't brave enough to watch the dialect version, but I imagine it's even better.

[abcdefg]

Pretty sure I saw 河西走廊 while still living in China. Some of these historical recreations, like this one, are of such high quality. It's a genre that has long flourished in China. 

------------ 

Edited to add: I see the date on this series is listed as 2022, so maybe I'm wrong about watching it since I left in early 2020. But it sure does look and sound familiar. 

 

https://tv.cctv.com/2022/07/04/VIDAvNhIUgppFT0adfBhvj0M220704.shtml 

[lordsuso]

@abcdefg on douban and wikipedia it says it's from 2015. And I agree about the high quality, it was a very pleasant watch.

[abcdefg]

Thinking back more carefully now, I recall watching it on the TV in my apartment in Kunming as an evening program on CCTV, an episode at a time as it was first released, not downloaded or streamed all at once from the internet. So it probably was at an earlier date, as you suggest. FWIW, I've never lived in a country where there was so much fascination with their historical past. That made for lots of excellent "period drama." The levels of scholarly accuracy varied, but the acting and production values were typically quite high. 

 

One series that got aired over and over in Kunming, (where I lived the longest,) was about Admiral Zheng He and his amazing sea voyages, since he was not only a national figure, but was also a "native son hero" of Yunnan. 

[lordsuso]

On 9/16/2024 at 12:33 PM, abcdefg said:

about Admiral Zheng He and his amazing sea voyages

this is probably the one you are referring to https://movie.douban.com/subject/3711722/ I know nothing about him, I will check it out!

 

On 9/16/2024 at 12:33 PM, abcdefg said:

so much fascination with their historical past

This reminds me of one thing in the 山海情 show, one of the main reasons why the villagers don't want to quit their village despite their poverty is that they want to remain by the tombs of their ancestors. I believe the ancient romans also had a strong worship of their ancestors, I don't know at what point that practice got somewhat lost in the west.

[lordsuso]

I just watched 隐秘的角落 (2020, #episodes: 12). Maybe it's because there are kids involved, but I found it a bit too gruesome and didn't really enjoy watching it. The plot is also absurd at times, the book probably explains some things better than the show.

[abcdefg]

On 9/16/2024 at 6:49 AM, lordsuso said:

This reminds me of one thing in the 山海情 show, one of the main reasons why the villagers don't want to quit their village despite their poverty is that they want to remain by the tombs of their ancestors.

 

This was an issue at the time the Three Gorges Dam 三峡大坝 was being built. I once took a "shore trip" to a hill where some such tombs had been moved. Guide talked about it. (Was on a boat trip down the Yangtze 长江。) 

[Tomsima]

On 11/17/2024 at 11:16 AM, lordsuso said:

隐秘的角落

I really enjoyed this show, I'd say definitely worth a watch personally!