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Chinese Detectives (subtitled Double Dragons of Mystery which is my favorite of possible titles for it) is a half-mystery and half-romantic comedy series set during the Mind Dynasty. Meng Tian Chu (Wallace Huo) grew up in Italy with his mother but has returned to China in search of his father. Somewhere along the way, he was abducted by pirates and escaped, but only after raiding Jack Sparrow's closet. (He was abducted by pirates, but I'm pretty sure I'm only joking about raiding Jack Sparrow's closet. IT'S AN AWFULLY SUSPICIOUSLY FAMILIAR OUTFIT.) In China, he finds his father's friend, Xia Yi Dao, on the day of his daghter, Feng Yi's (He Zhuo Yan) wedding to her childhood friend, Duan Ping (Nicky Wu).
Tian Chu is apparently a shoujo manga hero, as he falls in love with Feng Yi when she mistakes him for a thief and punches him out. Then Xia Yi Dao says the wedding has to be called off because Feng Yi and Tian Chu were engaged as infants, and he only allowedthe wedding because he thought Tian Chu was dead. Somewhere in there, Duan Ping, who represses far too much than is good for him, loses his patience with a random dude interrupting his wedding and declaring his love for his bride and also punches Tian Chu out. Shockingly Tian Chu still has all his teeth by the end of the first episode.
The romantic triangle is rather messy, but surprisingly unannoying in it's extreme shoujo-ness (Feng Yi is in love with her sweet-to-her superserious childhood friend but might be starting to like the weird "badboy" who just came to town and is engaging in odd antics to woo her. There's one episode where hald the episode is Tian Chu cooking Italian food and Feng Yi refusing to eat it because she is having nothing of the arranged marriage business.) and I'm enjoying all combinations of interactions between the three. The romcom antics are sporadically interrupted by dead bodies popping up and Duan Ping going off to officially investigate, and Tian Chu trying to solve the mystery first with less orthodox means, with Feng Yi helping one or both. The trailer I watched had me expecting a lot more proceduralish mystery solving and fewer antics, but it's had a good balance between them so far.
He Zhuo Yan was extremely good in the "spirited and mischevious, but also very clever" role she had early on in Paladins in Troubled Times (she was also very good later on, too, but her character there took a much more serious route after the first arc of that series) and Chinese Detectives is letting her do a lot more with that. Nicky Wu is apparently pretty popular right now, but this is the first thing I've seen him in. I was underwhelmed at first, but he's grown on me a lot. Wallace Huo rather surprised me because I'm used to him playing superserious and educated characters, not giant lovable yet annoying puppies who want to be detectives, so I was surprised he had this role in him.
Tian Chu is apparently a shoujo manga hero, as he falls in love with Feng Yi when she mistakes him for a thief and punches him out. Then Xia Yi Dao says the wedding has to be called off because Feng Yi and Tian Chu were engaged as infants, and he only allowedthe wedding because he thought Tian Chu was dead. Somewhere in there, Duan Ping, who represses far too much than is good for him, loses his patience with a random dude interrupting his wedding and declaring his love for his bride and also punches Tian Chu out. Shockingly Tian Chu still has all his teeth by the end of the first episode.
The romantic triangle is rather messy, but surprisingly unannoying in it's extreme shoujo-ness (Feng Yi is in love with her sweet-to-her superserious childhood friend but might be starting to like the weird "badboy" who just came to town and is engaging in odd antics to woo her. There's one episode where hald the episode is Tian Chu cooking Italian food and Feng Yi refusing to eat it because she is having nothing of the arranged marriage business.) and I'm enjoying all combinations of interactions between the three. The romcom antics are sporadically interrupted by dead bodies popping up and Duan Ping going off to officially investigate, and Tian Chu trying to solve the mystery first with less orthodox means, with Feng Yi helping one or both. The trailer I watched had me expecting a lot more proceduralish mystery solving and fewer antics, but it's had a good balance between them so far.
He Zhuo Yan was extremely good in the "spirited and mischevious, but also very clever" role she had early on in Paladins in Troubled Times (she was also very good later on, too, but her character there took a much more serious route after the first arc of that series) and Chinese Detectives is letting her do a lot more with that. Nicky Wu is apparently pretty popular right now, but this is the first thing I've seen him in. I was underwhelmed at first, but he's grown on me a lot. Wallace Huo rather surprised me because I'm used to him playing superserious and educated characters, not giant lovable yet annoying puppies who want to be detectives, so I was surprised he had this role in him.
