Sand Sea (Chinese Drama, New)

For those who are fans of the popular Chinese novel/drama series The Lost Tomb, this one should be a treat since it is based on another novel in the same series and set 10 years after the original story. Wu Xie, the hero in The Lost Tomb (not played by the same actor) will be the mysterious boss that pulls our young clueless hero into a desperate race to change the fate of the world.

I really enjoyed The Mystic Nine (2016, a prequel to The Lost Tomb) but I really wish these kinds of shows wouldn’t be so stingy with their romantic scenes.
Sweet Combat (Chinese Drama, New)

As the sole provider and caregiver of his little brother, our hero, Ming Tian thanked his lucky star when he was accepted into a sports university with an extremely generous scholarship…that is until he realized on the first day of school that he is the ONLY guy in the whole school. Thanks to several unfortunate run ins with our heroine, Fang Yu who has earned the title of the Queen due to her boxing skills, Ming Tian mistakenly believes our heroine to be a rude rich girl that likes to throw her money around.  Stuck in a school where the girls like to settle differences with their fists first, our hero will soon find it necessary to learn how to fight…and who better to teach him than our heroine?

Sweet Combat’s premise is fun and the first episode looked pretty promising. I wasn’t expecting any big sites to pick this one up, but I was pleasantly surprised to see it on Viki.
Bloody Romance (Chinese Web Drama, New)

Sold off by her own father into a horrifying fate, our heroine desperately grabs onto her only chance of survival by entering a mysterious town and joins a deadly competition to become a trained assassin. Without any previous training, our heroine seems to have little hope of surviving the deadly missions she has to pass. Fortunately, thanks to her “shadow”, an equally mysterious man who is her bodyguard/servant/trainer/mentor, our heroine passes each seemingly impossible mission…and falls in love with her shadow in the process despite knowing it is forbidden.

This web drama’s production was pretty decent and the acting was solid as well.
Story of Yanxi Palace (Chinese Drama, New)

Palace intrigue is usually not my thing so I almost didn’t check this one especially after I realized Yu Zhen, the very controversial Chinese producer produced this one. (Yu Zhen’s past work such as Swordsman (2013) tend to be very popular but often comes with lots of anti-fans because he tends to make um… controversial changes to the story.) After avoiding the show for a while I eventually decide to just watch the first episode…and four hours later was forced to admit the story is surprisingly decent! Story of Yanxi Palace IS all about palace intrigue and the catfights between the emperor’s various concubines but something I would usually find immensely tiring turns out to be extremely amusing when one adds our spunky and smart heroine to the mix.

I am not holding too much hope on the romance front since the synopsis makes it pretty obvious that while our heroine will have a romance line with the male second lead she will eventually end up as one of the emperor’s concubine. Again, that knowledge alone will usually make me stay far far away from this one, but after watching the first couple episodes I was charmed enough that I am starting to think that I should be fine with the ending. The writer really has done an impressive job with the emperor’s character. Here is an emperor who is a bit playful in personality but the fact that he is an emperor means that he has to hide and suppress a lot of his personal feelings for the good of his country. We are only four episodes in, but already, I am hoping fervently that our spunky heroine will become a source of comfort and trusted ally to the emperor even if their relationship might not be the memorable first love our heroine would have with the male second lead.

With a 60 episode count, there is still plenty of chances for this one to go south, but for now, the show is quite addicting and I think worth checking out even if the synopsis contains everything I would usually avoid like the plague.
Thirty But Seventeen (Korean Drama, New)

Waking up after 13 years in a coma due to a bus accident, our heroine has to figure out how to accept her now 30 year old body when mentally she is still a 17 year old high school girl with a bright future ahead of her. Searching her way back to her old house, our heroine meets our hero who is an eccentric set designer and wants nothing to do with human relationships due to a traumatic experience he experienced 13 years ago. Quite unsympathetic towards the strange woman that somehow barged into his house, our hero is clueless that she is actually the girl he hasn’t been able to forget for the last 13 years…the one he thought had died because of him.

This one looks pretty good…but alas I am completely out of room on my watch list right now. Sigh…
Life (Korean Drama, New)

Out of all the new shows, Life was the one I was most excited about since it was written by the same writer that gave us Secret Frost. Not to mention this time around we get the amazing combine star power of Lee Dong Wook AND Cho Seung Woo (who was also the hero in Secret Frost). Perhaps due to the extremely high bar I set for this show, I was pretty disappointed by the first episode. The story was solid, the acting great, and the suspense gripping (not quite as good as Secret Frost though and feels kinda random) …yet I found myself bored for some reason until the last two minutes of episode one when Cho Seung Woo walks into a room full of disgruntled doctor and instantly commands everyone’s (including mine) attention. Episode two was MUCH better mainly because Cho Seung Woo was finally part of the storyline but unfortunately I still find my attention wondering everytime he is not on screen. I feel terrible because I actually like Lee Dong Wook a lot and he is doing a good job with his character so I have no idea why my attention starts to drift the moment the camera turns away from Cho Seung Woo.

Still, despite some concerns on my part, Life does tackle a very interesting question: Hospital needs money to operate but often the greatest needs are departments that serve the population that lacks money. Doctors who place their patients first are great and all, but in a real world, is it really possible to operate our medical services at a steep loss? Most medical drama makes the patient loving doctors the hero while the villains are those who dare to bring money into the equation. It is interesting to have a drama where the big corporate dude (Cho Seung Woo’s character) is not necessarily the big evil villain…although I am not sure he is a good guy either.

 

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