Are you a fan of historical dramas with a central love story, murder, intrigue, period costumes and powerful villains? I love the tropes of secret identity, royalty, court politics, forbidden love, surprise twists and mysteries to solve. In Asian historical dramas, fight scenes are always part of the story, and sometimes you’ll get a bit of fantasy or time travel as well. Below are two shows I’ve recently finished and recommend, in addition to the latest season of The Brokenwood Mysteries set in New Zealand.
Image by Ivana Tomášková from Pixabay
Unveil Jade Wind
Check out the Chinese drama Unveil Jade Wind on Netflix. During the Tang Dynasty, Li Peiyi is head of a palace investigation team, and she’s in charge when a royal princess dies in a mysterious fire during the Lantern Festival. As Peiyi launches an investigation, she follows a trail that leads her to more dead bodies.
She teams up with scholarly Xiao Huaijin, Deputy Director of the Astronomical Bureau. He uses his acute powers of observation to find clues, while Peiyi uses her authority and martial arts skills to get answers. What’s especially interesting is how they solve crimes without access to modern technology.
In the midst of grisly crime scenes, Peiyi and Huaijin begin to fall for each other. Meanwhile, a deeper mystery remains. Peiyi seeks to learn who ordered the massacre of her entire family fifteen years ago. She was the sole survivor at the time. As the truth leads back to the palace, she realizes that finding justice doesn’t always mean the guilty party may be held accountable. Be reassured of a happy ending for the romantic couple.
Read more Here or buy the series at https://amzn.to/4tOYyl6
Pursuit of Jade
Another drama I’d recommend is Pursuit of Jade, a similar historical setting where the heroine, Fan Changyu, is a pig farmer in a rural town. Her parents supposedly died when attacked by bandits. She’s learned the butcher trade from them and is unusually strong as a result. When she finds a man half-dead in a snow drift, she carries him home and nurses his wounds.
Xie Zheng, a war hero, is hiding from his enemies and pretends he’s a drifter, when in reality he is the renowned military leader, the Marquis of Wu’an. To save Changyu’s home, he agrees to marry into her family as a live-in husband. They grow closer as his enemies seek him out. But someone is also after Fan Changyu and her younger sister. Changyu begins to realize that her parents may have kept them hidden in this backwater village for a reason.
As war approaches, she’s conscripted into the army, where she achieves glory using her fierce fighting skills. Meanwhile, as danger encroaches from all sides, she attempts to trace her family’s history to determine her true lineage. She fears for her live-in husband, who’s gone off to battle, without realizing he’s the famed Marquis of Wu’an. But when his true identity is eventually revealed, class differences and family secrets threaten to tear them apart. Read more about these ill-fated lovers Here.
If you enjoy strong kick-butt heroines, swashbuckling sword fights, dastardly villains, forbidden love, palace politics and murder, jump into these Asian historical dramas. The excellent storytelling will captivate you from episode one all the way through to the end. These stories have all the tropes I enjoy, and I am completely addicted to them.
What TV show has you hooked these days?
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