Hi, you're watching AvenueX and this is my video talking about two chinese dramas
that are going on right now on both satellite television and web platforms
and I'm making this video basically saying that unless you have very specific personal reasons,
why you want to check out these two dramas, I suggest don't click them open.
You definitely have better things to do in your life that will benefit you more.
These two dramas being Gong Su previously named Gong Su Jing Ying
Prosecution Elite that's been aired on Tencent and iqiyi and satellite televisions.
And then Shu Nian, In Later Years that's been aired on satellite television and iqiyi
i've watched both dramas by the episode count ten and I decided to quit both of them.
These 2 dramas are by no means "Bad dramas", if we set the standard
of a drama being bad at something better than Hou Lang, Gen Z
Gen Z is not only bad, it's ridiculous.
These two dramas are definitely better.
They are the type of unnecessary dramas in my opinion,
and probably wouldn't provide you with any entertainment value that you check out a drama for.
So let me divide and conquer. Let's first talk about the Dilraba, Tong Dawei led Gong Su
and then the Hao Lei, Wang Ou, Tang Yixin and many other people led Su Nian
Gong Su previously known as Gong Su Jing Ying, right now in china, it's just called Gong Su
literally means public prosecution, this is a 40 episodes drama.
I watch this drama when it airs on the first day,
and I followed it as it updates daily, within its producer catalogue,
you can see that there's actually supreme prosecution of china.
So it is a Pu Fa television, literally meaning popularization of law, drama.
It has a task on itself, that's why it goes on satellite television
to help the public get better idea of what is the procedure of certain cases,
how law works, what are the differences between the court, the police and the prosecution,
and what are rampant going on right now in china, which this drama mostly focuses on fraud.
So this drama in its function is really designed to be something that shows up at your 8 o'clock on your television
and remind the elderly people in your family. If something similar happens,
don't believe in it, don't send money to people you don't know
and don't fall into those traps.
That's really the function and purpose of making such a drama
upon knowing that, you kind of have an expectation of what quality this drama would be.
and what type of plot almost has to happen in the drama?
And then when you watch it. oh It will do that exactly as you expect,
as a contemporary drama production.
It has a very standard overall production quality.
I don't think they put the money in designing anything that has, say,
a coherent style that has its own flair,
just making it work and get all the lines spoken and the plot working.
The good thing about it is it's pretty realistic.
It doesn't beautify anybody, it's very realistic lighting, no skin smoothing,
often very bad lighting. In terms of not polishing it.
You can see a lot of shots where it's almost just lit by.
We make the scene bright enough for exposure and done.
There's no thinking about how we design a scene to flattery actors a little bit more
without obviously overdoing it
there's very little effort put into make the drama look high end.
So often actors look pretty selfie with the default iphone front facing camera.
That kind of look. so in a look department,
even though it's led by pretty Dilraba, it's just like not gonna be super visually pleasing
then in terms of the plot itself, because it's so heavy on
let's just bring in all the cases, all the things that can happen in real life
so that people get warned, it has that purpose and task on it.
It definitely preaches a little bit too much, whenever it comes to a court proceeding,
or it comes to an interrogation of suspect with the police and with the prosecutor.
You see a huge amount of lines spoken so that the audiences and
the general public can see the exact wording that's according to law has to happen
and what different types of rights you have.
Or if you admit to your crime in this way or that way,
what are the different punishment that may end up on you?
They really go into detail about all those things.
It's almost like verbatim written from some kind of standard script
so that people have who has never been in the court case
would actually get an idea about prosecution, court, police, how all these things work.
But these things are not necessarily useful for dramatic storytelling.
Therefore, the drama becomes very burdened and overloaded with these things
that as a story it gets dragged out.
It becomes too redundant with information not related to the plot itself.
It's quite tasking actually on all the actors because they have to remember
so many words and lines and speak clearly with dictation
so that the audiences can hear it well
Dilraba, Tong Dawei, You Jingru these actors all do a very good job of doing that,
but it makes the drama as a plot thing very boring
and sometimes just make you zone out
and the drama starts with a rather exciting, almost like a spy novel beginning.
And that's the only excitement you're gonna get
once that plot passes not even one moment that's that exciting has happened since then.
The dilemma for a drama reviewer is I totally see the purpose of such productions and I think it needs to exist.
But as a drama, hell, it's so boring.
In this case, I really cannot blame my lack of enthusiasm on any of the specific actors.
I said this is Dilraba's Zhuan XIng (转型 type change) drama into the serious drama land
and I mean for the dramas purpose she's doing a good enough job,
it's just the story itself how it's written the purpose of it is not lending to
any drama lovers to actually watch it as a dramatic narrative
that's interesting, engaging, page turner, plot heavy, none of that,
okay? At least that's the first 10 episode. I don't know what happens later.
I don't really want to waste my life on it.
This drama also almost don't have any emotional, romantic line.
You can see that there are a couple of men of interest in Dilraba's female lead character's life.
I don't know if she's gonna have a significant line in that later,
but so far they're all just like just about there, but it's like not getting to any milestone.
and you can't quite tell which one would really be the one. If they do have one,
maybe it's just not gonna happen throughout the whole thing.
Like I said Pu Fa is the first goal of this drama.
Most people probably would come into the drama because of Dilraba is well known.
You wanna check out her contemporary and more serious drama then
probably it's not gonna make you very happy about it.
I've told you what it feels like.
Make up your mind about whether you want to invest your life in that.
Then the next one, Shu Nian
it airs on satellite television and also iqiyi and also being updated at a really weird pacing.
But anyway, i've watched 10 episodes of it.
It is a drama based on an existing novel,
and it had gone through actually a couple of really unfortunate events.
First, this drama is led by Hao Lei, Wang Ou, Tang Yixin, three very main female roles in this drama,
but then the other people are also very important to have a lot of screentime
including Liu Yijun, Pang Hanchen, Song Dandan, Wang Yanlin
and it's a family story. We go to the Ni family.
The eldest is the grandmother. She is suffering from early stage of alzheimer's.
Then in the middle age pack, you have the eldest brother,
the second brother and the youngest daughter of this family.
The eldest son marries to Song Dandna's role and they are the eldest sort of sub family in the family.
And their son is Wang yanlin, and Wang Yanlin marries Tang Yixin
The second son played by Liu Yijun marries Hao Lei
and they're suffering from marriage problem, midlife crisis,
and they have a teenager son
and the youngest daughter is not married.
she words at a television station played by Wang Ou
and she's already considered a little bit old in her 30s, still not married,
and then younger guy older woman situation with her relationship with the younger guy.
oh I forgot to mention the eldest son family with Song Dandan and Wang Yanlin
That story is mostly focused on the married into the family daughter in law
played by Tang Yixin, and their conflict between 2 generations.
And so after i've told you that, the first thing you should think about is
oh what a mess. It's a big family, three different sub families.
They each have archetypical problems,
women who don't get married at the age where the society expect you to get married
and getting into a relationship with a younger guy
and then midlife crisis of wanting to divorce after you've married for 20 years or something.
And then you have a daughter in law, and there's this constant battle between having kids or not
or like you know buying houses or not. uh ~
And then you have a grandmother who is suffering from early stage alzheimer's.
so this story is very stressful. That's what I'll say about it.
From episode one from first moment. It's stressful.
Every plot is stressful. If you don't want that, don't watch this drama
for this type of drama, even when it has a lot of stressful plot
sometimes it can be still very good and very touching, very well written, highly engaging.
We've seen that type of drama. This is not one of them.
It doesn't deliver that good part of this type of drama and it's filled
with stress of the bad part of the this type of drama.
Also, this drama is very unfortunate.
I think it should have gone live actually back in 21.
But one of the supporting role in the original footage is an idol who had a crash happening,
house collapsing, not very well known, I believe,
99% of my channel viewer don't even know this person.
He's not famous at all, but he did something stupid on internet
that just made him like kind of soft disappeared and banned from internet.
Because of that, they had to face swap his role and reissued certain villages when it cannot be face swapped
with the actor Pang Hanchen
So originally Wang Ou is paired up with a much younger guy,
the older woman younger guy situation,
but then that guy is flopped. so they had to redo all his plot
and that postponed the release date for a whole year until 23 that this drama comes out
In the relationship between Wang Ou and Pang hancheng's character,
at least with the first 10 episodes i've watched, it doesn't quite work,
maybe it is to do with that hey had to get somebody to save the day
and reshoot in this sense is very weird, face swapping I can't imagine how bad it can get.
So that may be one reason that impacted at least that sub plotline in the whole big thing.
But if we totally disregard the Wang Ou and Pang Hanchen storyline,
just looking at the second son and eldest son, their family story,
oh my blood pressure, my blood pressure oh and and stress level
and psychological pain just like keeps shooting up as I was watching it.
There's only stress and and negative vibe I get from watching this drama.
And I am surprised that I stayed until episode ten.
oh and there's this one character who is with the Pang Hanchen role
his aunt, but younger than him, family generation thing.
She is just so random. She's injected into the story for no good reason
and the actress is bad at acting and doesn't go with anything.
And every time she shows up, i'm confused about why she's in the story
and she happens to have a lot of screen time somehow.
So this is a overall very messy drama.
And I think when they went on satellite television after a few days, it didn't perform at all.
It was so bad that they had to pause the drama for a while and re scheduling it
very unfortunate thing, but I can't blame television stations really,
it's not working this drama. Everything of this drama is not working,
although it has so many very good actors somehow it's just all a mess.
So for Prosecution Elite and in later years,
I cannot see any reasonable reason that I would recommend these two dramas to anybody.
I've told you my reasons and if you still want to check out for your personal reasons, totally fine,
but I doubt anybody would have patience watching through these two.
And right now, as i'm making this video at the beginning of june 2023,
there really isn't a super good drama going on right now in chinese dramaland
The thing is if there is suddenly a Kuang Biao Knockout drama
or a Three Body showing up,
oh you're gonna hear it from everywhere.
Right now i'm not hearing anything.
So I made this video basically to help you narrowing down your targets
when you are selecting dramas, saving your time, hope that's useful.
Thank you for watching AvenueX
I'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile live long and happy drama watching.