The success record of modern romances drama this year in 2023 has been baaaad. From the best to the worst (comparatively) among the big name starring modern dramas has to be Hidden Love, Sunshine By My Side, Rising with the Wind, Me and My Perfect Husband, Nothing But You, Only for Love, and Fireworks of My Heart, but honestly it’s all lackluster compared to prior years when there has been some good ones. The year will end with one more joining the ranks and remains to be seen if it’ll end the year on a high note – Tencent dropped Love Me Love My Voice with Tan Jian Ci and Zhou Ye today and the drama is adapted from a novel by Mo Bao Fei Bao. The two leads look great together and it’s nice to see them in a non period angst drama being emotionally or physically pulled through the wringer.
Preview for Love Me Love My Voice:
I just completed Only for Love, of course FF most of the time. This drama can just drag on for 36eps with so little plot. For modern romance, one of the more watchable and enjoyable modern was Boss and Me. Not referring to the lead artistes(Not keen on Zhang Han) but it was produced much better. At least there was a plot. These days the modern drama are like a cloth rack for lead cast to model fashion wear, product placements. It is just a very very long ad.
But I have to say, China is quite good at producing Youth romance. First love, Uni romance etc. There have been quite a number of good ones. But I have a good feeling for Tan Jianci and Zhou Ye’s new drama. Looking forward to this.
@HL I also liked Boss and Me. It was this drama back then that made me like Zhao Liying. I also liked I Am Nobody from this year and My GF Is An Alien (from previous years.) I heard Fake It Til You Make It was also good.
But in general, I also agree that modern C-dramas lack coherency and plot. Even their youth dramas are meh to me.
I just finished watching I am Nobody. It is so funny. Peng Yu Chang is a good young actor. My GF is Alien Season 1 is entertaining too! But I did not enjoy Season 2 thus dropped it. Yes Fake it til you make it was a surprise for me. It was actually a witty drama. But I only just started. I am quite slow in watching my drama marathons.
I find Cdrama Youth dramas quite sweet and fluffy. What I found really interesting was how different the studying culture is in China and the West. We know it is different but I still found it interesting watching as whilst comparing it to my own kid of similar age. Many of the kids in China better schools are just so stress and hot house. Their study hours can be so long even till night at school.
I do watch it to learn about the school culture.
@HL
I am Nobody is so good, I laugh and cry watching that. I wonder if there is similar modern wuxia like that? It’s so fun seeing how they use their power in modern times 😆
Ironically, I like “Boss & Me” the least out of Gu Man’s drama adaptations (whereas I loved “My Sunshine”, “Love O2O” and “You Are My Glory”) because I didn’t like the deviations from the source novel. If they had stuck to the source material, particularly in the second half, I would have loved this drama unreservedly; I adored Zhao Liying as Shanshan, and the chemistry with her male lead was just right.
Besides Gu Man’s drama adaptations, Ding Mo’s are watchable too (“Memory Lost” is my favorite, because they did justice to the romance in the original novel, unlike with the adaptations of “When a Snail Falls in Love” and, to a lesser degree, “Love Me If You Dare”).
Also heard good things about Mo Bao Fei Bao’s drama adaptations (at least those where she was involved in the production).
I loved My Sunshine. Love 020 and You are my Glory are not bad. I enjoy Memory lost alot. Both lead were just amazing. When a snail falls in Love is great as I really love Wang Kai as a actor. But Wang Ziwen is a good actress but I dont warm to her at all. Just my issue..Love me if You Dare, I did enjoy as I watched it but after a month later, I have forgotten most of the story…lol.
@HL I totally agree with you that China has a knack for product those school coming of age dramas. I love that genre, but it’s definitely not for everyone. Some people may find it slow and unexciting. This past year I really enjoyed When I Fly Towards You. The leads are relatively new and their acting is a bit raw, but they all have really good chemistry with each other.
I also enjoyed Boss and Me and Love O2O when they first came out. I recently tried to rewatch it and realized it doesn’t have much rewatch value. Love O2O in particular had terrible acting by ZS. YY was super handsome though and great eye candy. To this day, I don’t know how I’m supposed to believe Mao Xiaotong is supposed to be ugly in that drama. She was the cutest little thing.
@Soph, Mao Xiaotong is the cutest person the the drama… Both drama have 2 rewatch value for me. Zheng Shuang turn me off and Zhang Han is just a chauvinist. I have problems with chauvinist.
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I’m watching this one for sure!
This year’s top contemp drama for me was:
Hidden Love
Alliance (women who talk like mature women, discussing mature topics!)
Stand or Fall (Cin Lan was just kick ass amazing and Wang Yang was cool and not just because he played CEO and he LOOKED like a CEO, ahem. Their witty repartees….)
Fake It Till You Make It.
Others:
I am like Rising With The Wind.
I’m hoping to catch Mr. and Mrs. Chen (but that’s a Republican era drama so is that considered contemp?)
There were a few short format dramas that were silly but cute and enjoyable.
Liking not I am “like” Rising With the Wind.
I read so much about the bad reviews of Rising with Wind, I just watched eps 1, it looks good. But it is just the first eps…
There is a couple of short format dramas I found very interesting too. But far and rare…
Actually, I thought it had good reviews, even with a good duoban rating,in the 7 range .
I think rising with the wind is quite good, it actually deserve the top spot more than something like only for love. The plot is better and they don’t do no sensical things with their job
It’s really not as bad as those naysayers here said. I’m enjoying it. The romance is not typical idol romance and there is actually a plot about the business LOL. Anyway, so far, so good.
I too agree, when I read how bad it was on this blog’s forum, I checked it out myself. Honestly, it is really not deserving all the lashing. It has a interesting plot.
Really enjoying the drama so far. Its giving me Love O2O vibes, one of my fave rom-coms with just pure good vibes and no dramatic shit. Really love the 古风 inspired songs as well. But 33 eps is worrying me; I hope they don’t add too many filler scenes.
Rising with the wind is good,the story and characters are logical,unlike only for love and fireworks for my heart,its just that its too long,gong jun acting is boring,he is handsome but boring.rising with the wind as a whole have good production value and script.if only the male lead is a better actor it would have been a hit.
Hmm.. Hidden Love is surely the top C-drama internationally imo~ it’s OST is the top streamed C-drama OST on Spotify and a lot of K-drama fans swerved so fast & started opening up to Cdramas because of Hidden Love. I get that in China it was too ‘oily’ but Chen Zhe Yuan’s Duan Jia Xu performance made a lot of people take notice of him. And Zhao Lusi became even more loved overseas.
One is short with heavy makeup all the time and the other one can’t act. LOL. Passed!
C modern drama this year is a snoozefest most of the time. I enjoyed the great chemistry of the OTP in Hidden Love but that’s it. The plot of HL was empty taking out the chemistry. I wouldn’t have given any attention to Sunshine by My Side if the leading man had not been Xiao Zhan. It was a lazily written script; the said award-winning writer proved that Chinese award was a joke that she even made up the stupidest tropes of ice hockey trio in the drama history. LMAO. Such a huge waste of a strong cast other than those three nugus!!! Romance? Was there any romance in SBMS? I didn’t see it! Where? Where? Now I even wonder if XZ has phobia playing intimate scenes with any actresses after the overkill lovey-dovey scenes in Oath of Love. LOL. The rest of the dramas mentioned in the blog are not even worth a mention.
Without good scripts, all else is futile to produce interesting dramas. Are there courses like creative writing 101 at Chinese schools? It seems Chinese writers are running out of ideas or they are just afraid of being creative.
Blame their censorship,they can’t go far in being creative. They will end up recycling most of the story lines.
The three nugu getting so much airtime is probably case of nepotism. Scriptwriter in china isn’t actually that respected, investors can request change arbitrarily, and that way they would insert their own actor in it to promote them. The plot was nice when it’s about xiao zhan, which I think how the writer wrote it initially but then the other added characters, ugh I wish they let the scriptwriter do their job and don’t meddle.
SMBS was a huge disappointment for me after so much criticism about The Longest Promise. I expected it to be at least as good as The Youth Memories that was even obviously tainted with state propaganda that CCP really has hard time giving up LMAO. Since SMBS was the latest drama of XZ and it had been advertised to be scripted around him, I had high hope to see a great modern romance series but NOPE! His noona romance was flat and washed down by very limited screen time with his leading lady, Bai Baihe who I consider a very good actress. I did not expect him to have cringe worthy love lines with BBH as he did with Yang Zi in Oath of Love LOL. But at least show a proper romance development in SBMS! Cdrama is really hopeless !
I agree with you on SUNSHINE BY MY SIDE. I started to watch because ML Xiao Zhan but I couldn’t finish. Stopped after 5 episodes.
You’re probably right about XZ being unable to show much sentiment. Probably couldn’t do it due to the large age gap. I don’t know, just a guess.
Tan Jian Ci can’t act? Or Zhou Ye? Lol. You are wrong if it’s the first one. But lower asians like you are dumb.
You hate short men? So narrow-minded. Should I hate you because you are a lower Asian? You are like people who hate others for stupid reasons like being black lol. How being short is bad when an actor job is being good at acting in the first place. Poor bigot 🤣
@Somebody Being tall is not requirement for being an actor. You are being narrow-minded for no reason, asians like you and their subnormal beauty standars are the worst. I agree about the heavy makeup though.
Modern dramas really don’t need to be more than 20+ episodes long unless it’s some epic family saga. I think Hidden Love worked well because it was just about the right length while I liked and followed Rising with the Wind until around the midway mark. Sigh, on the other hand k-dramas are too short at 16 episodes and they tend to rush through the last episodes.
Very nice drama! Enjoying it so far! Very different theme, the acting is natural here. It’s a relaxing drama to watch! The leads has very good chemistry!