Hello, you're watching AvenueX
where a junkie on good storytelling,
shares her thoughts, knowledge and occasional
weird ideas on stories and how they're told.
and this is my final review only just finished airing contemporary drama.
Guan Yu Tang Yi Sheng de Yi Qie, Dr. Tang
this is a drama that went live on June 25th
on both the web platform iqiyi and
Satellite television cctv eight in China.
This drama is directed by Wen Deguang
written by Wang Zi
Led by QIn Lan, Wei Daxun, Huang Jue, Gao Lu,
and many other super familiar chinese dramaland faces
If you've watched Nirvana in Fire one and two,
you will see the Prince Ji and Yue Yinchuan the general,
if you've been recently watching the very popular A Dream of Splendour,
you' ll come across this actor who played Zhou She, in this drama,
he plays a doctor who also is named Zhou
but a totally different and much much more lovable character.
Also if you are watching Love like Galaxy right now you're gonna see
this actress showing up also in the Dr Tang drama as a head nurse
this drama was shot last year
they wrapped shooting at the end of August,
a rather reasonable average turnaround time for chinese dramas.
This drama is not based on any existing material.
It's an original script written by this script writer,
a lady who actually graduated from medical school.
But later when she decided to do masters,
she turned to arts and became a screenwriter.
So i've watched the whole thing and i'll give it.
If been very specific,
probably at 1.7 or 8,
gold mine score,
I am actually being very strict about this drama's rating.
I happen to come from a doctor's family,
particularly in this drama's version,
the cardiac department which is where my mother worked her whole life.
So I tend to be more picky at medical dramas.
Overall, this drama actually made it very palatable, watchable,
don't have significant big shortcomings that
you usually see in chinese medical dramas.
Therefore, i'm really,really happy
you have Qin Lan leading the drama as a doctor
Dr Tang who air dropped into this leading edge hospital in china,
particularly the cardiac surgery department.
She had years of experience over sea and
being one of the genius surgical doctors.
Initially nobody likes her,
nobody thinks she observes the position.
And then obviously she will prove that to everyone
that she is really one of the best choices.
One thing though,
is this kind of thing almost is impossible to happen
in reality in chinese hospitals,
leading edge hospitals and their leading edge department,
where you can have the department head, surgical head,
just get air dropped in out of nowhere, but it's a drama.
Our leading characters usually have some unusual abilities .
It hasn't gone to the Korean drama (Dr.) stranger level
where our male character can literally
x ray people with his hands.
So we can accept that I think
now as usual, let's go to talk about
what is good and not good about this drama.
I'm gonna leave all the good things to the later part.
And i'm just gonna first point out what is not so perfect about this drama.
Number one, the biggest problem I have with this drama
pretty much from episode one until the last moment was
it has uneven and uncontrollable skin smoothing throughout this drama
in certain shots, certain scenes, people look reasonable.
Then in certain shots, certain scenes
it's like the person who's doing post production just forgot to
adjust the percentage bar on how much you wanna skin smooth your actress.
In certain shots, Qin Lan almost melted.
It's just a blurry glow of white color,
certain dramas just skin smooth everyone
which is like you know at least it's fair.
but this rama,
it's just like using all the bullets on one actress
and sometimes overdo it too much.
If you hate that look,
this drama probably is gonna be a pain for you to watch through
because all 36 episodes have that and certain episodes
Go out of control.
Number two is this drama is not always 100%
every minute that exciting or nice to watch.
There would be certain episodes, certain scenes
certain sequences that are really nicely done
Then it will come a couple of scenes or half an episode
where not really anything that important happens.
And you probably will resolve to double speed, triple speed.
Third thing is more to do with after you watch the drama
that overall impression you get about the dramas depiction
of doctor's life, particularly in the cardiac surgical department,
in my opinion,
and also based on reality,
and also based on other reviews I've read written by professional doctors in
this department who are friends and actually classmates with this scriptwriter.
They would say there are parts of the things the drama did really well,
but then still the depiction of the life of doctors overall is too idealized.
They look too good,
basically all the time.
And it seems that they're always just chatting in their offices,
gossiping about this and that
which in certain departments of a hospital,
it may happen,
but not in cardiac surgery.
No way doctors are just like crazyly busy in china,
and usually they're over dutied and and understaffed.
And that's been going on for years.
My mother has been a physician,
so she doesn't do surgeries apart from pacemaker.
And her duty is not as intense let's say, as surgical departments
of the cardiac part of her hospital,
but still even being a physician is like
a lot of work and a lot of overtime, night shift.
The surgical department just gets it worse.
Basically, it just makes it too easy too pretty.
People are too lighthearted and have too little to do.
So these are some of the shortcomings of this drama,
you've been warned.
Now let's talk about what's great about this drama.
Number one,
it it is still relatively speaking a qualified
medical drama from chinese dramaland
Most of the other medical drama from chinese dramaland cannot even
be qualified as medical dramas
as they're filled with mistakes.
And often they're just love stories that's dressed up as a professional drama
where the characters are doctors.
But apart from that nothing they do look like they doctors.
Whereas in this drama they do sort out a lot of details about dress code,
for example, medical terms,
specific cases, what's the process of
They see a patient, decide the operation, surger plan
and then go and execute that.
And then afterwards what happens
It's a lot of procedural thing and specific medical cases,
and that's well researched compared to other dramas.
It wouldn't be perfect.
There's a very big level of reduced complexity and
showing it on camera about how each operation is done.
But overall, the cases are based on real cases and they make sense.
What I like about this drama is its tone
whether it's regarding personal relationship,
our female lead character's first, when she comes into the hospital,
nobody accepts her.
Till the end, everybody loves her
or between a specific patient and one doctor,
what kind of conflict and friendship
and their relationship development can happen
or regarding the bigger general picture of today's medical profession.
In this drama's version,
it plays everything a little bit,
but it doesn't turn it up to the maximum extreme dog blood level.
This drama doesn't go down that route to make you feel you need oxygen.
So this is an overall enjoyable, interesting, flow well
and doesn't make you feel too anxious drama.
The second thing I like about this drama is it's very professional.
They cast the right people for each role
and because it has so many doctors in this department,
by the midpoint,
you may still not have clear mental image about who each person is
their name, what's different about them?
What kind of position they're in in this whole story and where they're going.
But pretty much towards the end,
you're gonna have a very clear impression
of who each of those doctors nurses are.
What's their personal arc
What's their relationship with other characters
So this is a slow burned drama for each character in this story
apart from the leads like the absolute two leads, three leads.
Everyone gets an equal amount of screen time.
Gradually you get to know them better
and they're all very professional actors
because if you've watched their previous works in other dramas,
you almost don't actually bring that at all into this drama.
For example,
the actor Zhang Xiang who played Zhou She in A Dream of Splendor
who is a comic relief and also bad guy in the period drama.
Now he's in this contemporary drama as a doctor who is a family man
who actually does doesn't wanna advance that much in his professional field.
He doesn't want to sacrifice his family hours
that type of doctor
and he playes it so well that you almost don't even compute
that these two characters who are pretty much airing back to back,
belonging to two totally different productions.
It's the same person
I also want to point out. Wei Daxun
the thing with him is if you know a little bit about him in chinese dramaland is
he's professionally trained, he comes from central academy
and pretty well rounded actor, everything considered,
but somehow he's like the type of actor who is
not ambitious at all about being in good dramas,
getting important roles.
He's more known to be a visitor or guest star on all kinds of
variety shows to the point that people have forgotten that he's
actually graduated from a proper acting school and
this drama is one of the dramas he's being in recently that
actually gives him a major role and make you realize
yeah yeah he's acutally an actor and he's preety good
at doing whatever he is required to do.
And he's one of those actors.
I'll consider he actually has a face that can make him play all kinds of roles.
He wouldn't be so limited to one type.
He potentially has actually a quite big range.
And I know very soon probably another drama
that he is one of the main leads is gonna air.
I hope that one when it comes out,
he delivers a good performance that will make him come
out a little bit more into the mind of the public.
Then the third thing about this drama
that's unusually actually quite enjoyable,
but then it's a personal thing you may like it or may not like it.
I feel because it's a 36 episode drama.
So they need to fill still in the time.
They can't always be focused only on medical cases.
So they did put quite a bit energy to develop all kinds of characters'
complicated relationships.
You'll see the older doctor, the boss,the more established doctors versus young doctor,
there are a couple of couples In this drama version,
you'll see the more leveled colleagues' friendship,
also romance, also unusual friendship romanace
So there are guy and guy,
guy and girl, girl and girl,
different gender mix of all kinds of weird CPs
that pops up here and there.
You have this doctor and nurses getting married.
Clearly romantic relationship
our female lead and male lead are also constantly
in this romantic battle
eventually getting to a point at the end of this drama,
but you also have like our female lead with another
doctor played by Gao Lu who is the administrative staff
and that weird girl friendship
you are my true love you are my true love,
yeah but we both are also just like helping each other out
with our romantic relationship.
And they started at a really awkward place
end up being very good friends,
all kinds of very, very unusual and weird and sometimes comical,
sometimes intentionally set up dramatic relationships.
So this drama, apart from the medical side
has so many CPs and sometimes weirdly pleasurable CPs
I don't think it's gonna be loved by everybody.
Some people may find it's just too intentional,
or there's too much of that going on,
whereas they wanna a more professional focused drama.
I can see that.
So this point is maybe neutral.
It may be the positive, maybe negative,
depending on what kind of drama you wanna watch
at the end of this review.
I would say Dr Tang, Guang Yu Tang Yi Sheng De Yi Qie,
a more accurate translation should be
Everything About Dr Tang is a pretty enjoyable watch
of 2022 in the medical drama genre coming from chinese dramaland.
It's just not the type of thing that's easy to make.
and even for those very well known television series
as dramas that works really well.
If you really wanna scrutinize the medical side of things,
doctors can always pick up a lot of mistakes they make
and you kind of find a balance between
what looks exciting on camera and what goes on in reality,
there's still a long way to go for chinese dramas in this particular genre.
It's never been a strong suit of chinese dramaland and you can't
expect it to suddenly over night
industrial leading globally.
Overall, i'm still rather pleased with Dr Tang
And I hope this review has been helpful for you,
making up your decision about
whether you should go and check out this one.
That should be the end of this video.
Thank you for watching AvenueX
I'll see you in my next video.
Meanwhile, live long and happy drama watching.