any good TV series recently?

[Publius]

Anyone seen Tencent's 三体/Three-Body (available on 腾讯视频/WeTV currently at 14/30)? Any comment?

[sekkar]

Finished 唐朝诡事录 recently, felt it was pretty good.

 

Story is about two governmental officials during the Tang Dynasy investigating cases that appear to be super natural. All mixed together with the usual martial art fighting and overarching plot to topple the emperor etc, pretty standard stuff.

 

Main reasons for liking it:

• Manages to avoid the bloated feel of many Chinese shows by concentrating on a few longer cases set in different locations, with little filler and annoying back-and-forth love drama.
• Light-hearted, with good chemistry between the main cast
• Both suspenseful and funny in many places
• CGI surprisingly decent, i.e. it doesnt look so bad that it immediately takes you out of the scene.... 

 

I also enjoyed 东北插班生 which @EnergyReaper already mentioned. Perfect show to watch while eating dinner if you want something short and not complicated.

 

最强大脑 also started its new season, so following that one as usual.

[phills]

On 1/27/2023 at 1:56 PM, Publius said:

Anyone seen Tencent's 三体/Three-Body (available on 腾讯视频/WeTV currently at 14/30)? Any comment?

 

I just started watching this, seen a couple of episodes so far.  It's got a nice mystery/conspiracy mood set up at the beginning. 

 

The only jarring thing for me is 丁仪 is not quite how I imagined him.  I imagined him looking more like 汪淼 does.  But I might have confused book 1 丁仪 with later books 丁仪. 

 

Strangely I find 汪淼 kind of hard to understand without subtitles.  It's probably because he's so soft spoken, or maybe I just need to get used to his voice. The other people I don't have as much problem with.

[StChris]

On 1/29/2023 at 7:36 AM, sekkar said:

I also enjoyed 东北插班生

 

I just had a look at that, but I find these kind of shows difficult to watch when they cast 30+ actors in the roles of the students (some of them look older than the teachers!). Can't they at least get 18-21 year olds?

 

Anyone got any other good 东北 based dramas to watch?

[StChris]

I know a lot of people liked 想见你, so you might be interested in the movie version that recently released:

 

《#想见你》/ Someday or One Day 发布终极预告 回到过去的是黄雨萱还是陈韵如？（柯佳嬿 / 许光汉）【预告片先知 | Official Movie Trailer】 - YouTube

 

While I haven't watched it myself (don't know where I can), it seems to have the same cast and time-travelling plot (albeit focusing on the 2014-17 period this time). It only has a 6.4 rating on 豆瓣 compared to 9.2 for the TV series, so it's probably best not to set expectations too high.

[EnergyReaper]

On 1/29/2023 at 7:18 PM, StChris said:

Anyone got any other good 东北 based dramas to watch?

乡村爱情 series? The latest season is 15. I watched its very early seaons with my mom a long time ago. I just remember it's funny.

If you like high school romance drama, I strongly recommend a 2020 drama - 我才不要和你做朋友呢(I Don't Want To Be Friends With You). It's a fake time-travel drama.  Although it has several almost inexperienced young actors (I only knew one actress 庄达菲 when I watched it), their acting is natural and good. One of the best things I think is it has the perfect scenes and props of 1999-2004 though it's low budget.

[EnergyReaper]

On 1/29/2023 at 3:36 PM, sekkar said:

I also enjoyed 东北插班生

I put it on hold in episode 8. I don't know when I can have time to come back to it. Recently there are too many dramas I want to watch. I have a really bad habit. I often start a drama, binge-watching many episodes and then jump to another one I'm interested in.? What I'll try to pick up again and finish in two months include 向风而行, 我可能遇到了救星, 我的卡路里男孩, 卿卿日常, 明天也想见到你. And now I'm watching 保护我方城主大人.

[Woodford]

On 1/26/2023 at 11:56 PM, Publius said:

Anyone seen Tencent's 三体/Three-Body (available on 腾讯视频/WeTV currently at 14/30)? Any comment?

It’s already available on YouTube (in the USA, anyway)! I’ve only begun the first episode. It’s been interesting to take the characters I imagined in my head and compare them to the TV versions. 

 

And as someone whose first language is not Chinese, I’m reminded how terribly difficult it is to understand movie/TV dialog (even more so than other kinds of audio). I resort to subtitles at times.

[phills]

On 1/30/2023 at 12:22 AM, Woodford said:

And as someone whose first language is not Chinese, I’m reminded how terribly difficult it is to understand movie/TV dialog (even more so than other kinds of audio). I resort to subtitles at times.

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one.  I thought I improved a lot last year, although I let it slip the last month and a half due to holiday season.  It was a bit humbling

 

Anyways, some motivation to get back on the skills treadmill. 

[EnergyReaper]

Just finished 2 episodes of 保护我方城主大人(My Uncanny Destiny), didn't expect it's so funny, and I've seen many 歇后语 I didn't know. If you like costume comedy, recommend it.

[Woodford]

On 1/29/2023 at 11:15 AM, phills said:

I'm glad I'm not the only one.  I thought I improved a lot last year, although I let it slip the last month and a half due to holiday season.  It was a bit humbling

 

Anyways, some motivation to get back on the skills treadmill. 

 

Yes, I feel the same way! I'm always improving, but never as much as I'd like. I push against my limitations, but each new stage becomes a new limitation. Sometimes I think, "Yes! This feels great! I can understand most of this stuff!" Then at other times, I think, "I can barely understand anything. Why?" I imagine the process will continue until one day, years in the future, I can say, "My Chinese skills are okay, I guess!"

[sekkar]

On 1/27/2023 at 1:56 PM, Publius said:

Anyone seen Tencent's 三体/Three-Body (available on 腾讯视频/WeTV currently at 14/30)? Any comment?

 

Watched the first two episodes last night and I must say I am impressed so far for the following reasons:

1. The director is not afraid to let a scene play out slowly and properly build tension. I feel like most Chinese shows are appealing to the lowest common denominator and are deathly afraid of their audience being bored if “nothing" is happening. 
2. A cast that seems to be hired for their acting ability/suitability for a certain role and not their looks or 流量
3. Sticking closely to the book so far, no sign of any filler etc (at least as far as I can remember, it has been a while since i read it）

Already looking forward to continuing watching tonight. I'm exited to see how they handle the cultural revolution stuff, how much will be changed/cut etc. 

 

So far I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to western viewers who has no special attachment or interest in China, which I would almost never do for a Chinese TV show.

 

Of course it is a bit too early to give a proper judgement after only two episodes, lots of time to screw it up still ?

 

[markhavemann]

Not sure if anybody has mentioned 狂飙, it seems to be really popular at the moment. I've watched five episodes so far (out of around 40 total) and the quality seems to be pretty good overall. One of the main characters is played by the actor who plays the father in 隐秘的角落, and the general feel of it seems similar too since it's a crime type drama.

 

Would definitely recommend so far. 

 

https://baike.baidu.com/item/狂飙/57027307?fr=aladdin

[carlo]

On 2/8/2023 at 5:33 AM, markhavemann said:

Not sure if anybody has mentioned 狂飙

I watched the first two episodes on Youtube last weekend. Do you have to be a subscriber somewhere to continue?

 

I'm in two minds about this kind of shows. I'll never enjoy them as much as 沉默的真相. The officials speak in perfectly formed sentences, with all the hip phrases from the latest study session. Still it's interesting in other ways. A good workout in remembering who leads what office. A sense of what's important now etc.

[markhavemann]

On 2/8/2023 at 3:24 PM, carlo said:

I watched the first two episodes on Youtube last weekend. Do you have to be a subscriber somewhere to continue?

It's available on iQiyi, unfortunately you do need to subscribe though. 

https://www.iq.com/play/狂飙-第1集-m3xqg6dcv8?lang=zh_cn

 

Not sure if I'm allowed to post this here but it's also available without subscription here. This is one of those websites that will be gone in a month or two I'm sure.

 

[Jan Finster]

On 2/8/2023 at 10:54 AM, markhavemann said:

This is one of those websites that will be gone in a month or two I'm sure.

Looks like it is already gone....

[markhavemann]

On 2/9/2023 at 2:13 AM, Jan Finster said:

Looks like it is already gone....

Looks like it might only be available in China. I can access it without a VPN but it just gives an error when I'm try while connected to the VPN.

 

Maybe someone should start a discord or wechat group for sharing Chinese language learning resources like this...

[EnergyReaper]

On 2/8/2023 at 5:54 PM, markhavemann said:

Not sure if I'm allowed to post this here but it's also available without subscription here.

I really appreciate it. I don't have any VIP of those Chinese video sites. Now I can continue binge-watching series.

[sekkar]

On 1/31/2023 at 3:08 PM, sekkar said:

Watched the first two episodes last night and I must say I am impressed so far for the following reasons:

 

Finished all of "Three Body Problem" yesterday, and overall I really liked it. It follows the book very closely, almost literally quote by quote in many scenes, which is a positive in my opinion. The acting and directing was overall pretty good, except for the foreign actors, but that is pretty much a given in Chinese productions ?.

 

The amount of filler content is also kept at a minimum. Apparently the director originally wanted 24 episodes , but was forced to do 30, which would explain the pacing being slightly too slow in a couple of places. Nothing that really bothered me though, but if they stuck with the original plan it would probably take the series from "very good" to "really good".

 

I am pleasantly surprised about the flashbacks to Ye Wenjie's past. I was afraid they would not be able to air a lot of it due to censorship, but it seems like most of the stuff about the cultural revolution was kept in except for one major exception:

Spoiler

Her father's death at the hands of the Red guards

You could actually tell that they originally filmed it, but couldnt get it through the censors, as the replacement scenes felt super vague and I didnt really get what they were supposed to be saying. Still, even being allowed to show the rest of stuff is huge in my mind, my wife said it was the first time she's seen anything like this portrayed on TV.

 

You can tell it was made on a tight budget though (I've heard one epsiode of the Netflix version has a bigger budget than the whole Tencent series) , which makes me a bit worried about their adaption of the next book. Hopefully the success of the show means that they will get a bigger budget for the next season.

 

Overall I really liked it and highly recommend it. I feel like I got the adaption of the book I wanted and at this point I don't really feel any need to see the Netflix version. I'd still probably fastforward though it just out of curiosity, but at this point I feel pretty confident that the Tencent adaption will be the superior show (for me at least).

 

[happy_hyaena]

I've been going in and out of Chinese media for almost a decade now and coming back I really feel like the quality is starting to pick up.

 

Just finished watching 去有风的地方 (Meet Yourself) with 刘亦菲 and 李现. The former is very famous (for portraying Mulan), whereas the latter has also become more noticeable. It's a drama series about a woman who suffers from a personal loss, experiences something of an existential crisis, and quits her job in Beijing to spend 3 months in Yunnan. While there she gets to know her fellow neighbors at the guesthouse she's staying at, as well the local villagers. While there she befriends a local who also used to live in Beijing, doing VC work, but who moved back to develop his small hometown in order to stop adults from leaving to find work elsewhere.

 

It's a beautiful drama in several ways. The acting and writing is really good. No dumb "rich CEO", no unnecessary drama, just a natural progression of intimacy and love,dealing with relevant themes and issues. The cinematography is gorgeous too, reminding me of a movie sometimes. Finally the side characters are genuienly interesting in their own rights and it feels good to just watch things unfold. 40 episodes long, the pacing is quite good.

 

In terms of Chinese the language isn't too difficult, it's possible to understand 80%-90% with an intermediate level of Chinese I'd say.

 

One thing that really struck me is that the scenes get quite explicit and suggestive (by Chinese standards!) later in the series. That's why I feel like the "quality is picking up" - the series doesn't feel like it was hampered trying to meet the expectations of some power-trippy censor.

 

It's by the same director and script writers behind 以家人之名 (Go Ahead) another equally brilliantly written and heartwarming show with a great cast of characters. The Chinese I'd argue is even easier to understand. Some of the actors from Go Ahead show up in Meet Yourself, so you feel a sense of satisfaction after having had to say goodbye to the previous series. Also 40 episodes long.