Looks like the Hans Zhang and Zheng Shuang onscreen pairing is nowhere near flaming out despite the two of them starring in three dramas together as the OTP already. I think they are the male-female mirrors of each other – perfectly pretty and perfectly mediocre at acting. It’s a good thing they have great chemistry with each other and continue to get offered dramas with each other. Coming off the compelling ratings success of SOP Queen with Cheng Qiao En and Godfrey Gao, Hans has agreed to return as the lead of the spin-off drama called 胜女的时代 (there is no English title yet but I would translate it literally as the The Era of the Leftover Woman). I confess to eagerly anticipating SOP Queen and being thoroughly bored and disappointed with the actual drama. It was pretty to look at but poorly edited and the story was not compelling in the least. The spin-off has a similar name and is borrowing the same conceit of a career woman looking for life, but this time the synopsis adds a decidedly makjang element to it. Zheng Shuang plays a pair of identical twins born to a rich family, but one of them is switched out by a poor mother who wants her dying daughter to get medical treatment. The older twin and the poor woman’s daughter are raised as fraternal twins, while the younger identical twin is raised by the poor woman.

After the girls grow up, the older twin is in love with an ordinary man that her mother disapproves of, played by Hans, and she elopes to be with him. She dies in a car accident and the rich mother happens to see her real other daughter and makes a deal with her – pretend to be the dead twin and the rich mother will pay for the poor mother’s medical treatment, not knowing that they are in fact real mother-daughter. Jessie Chiang plays the daughter of the poor woman switched to be raised as the fraternal twin. Hans thinks his beloved has suddenly had a change of heart towards him and vows revenge, only to fall in love with the other twin pretending to be his girlfriend. You guys still with me here? I thought SOP Queen was boring and none of the leads had chemistry with each other, but it was surprisingly not too melodramatic and had moments of comfortable ease. This spin off? It sounds insanely wack. I’ll probably check it out for the heck of it, especially since the official characters stills are as pretty and luxe as the ones for SOP Queen. The cast is rounded out by Kimi Qiao and Cindy Sun, with the drama slated for premiere during the high television season of Summer 2013. Continue reading →