This show is a huge disappointment. I really like Wu Zetian, the actual person, so I had a lot of expectations for this. I cannot understand WHY they chose to spend over half of the series's runtime with her life as Taizong's Cairen(she was his concubine for only 12 years) instead of with Gaozong(33 years together). The romance between her and Taizong barely existed in real life as she was not favored by him and it did NOT work on the show either as there was zero chemistry between them. I couldn't wait for that part to be over.
Wu Meiniang was also infuriating as a character for most of the show - I don't have that much of a problem with FLs that are on the innocent side, but when the show consistently rubs in my face how much of a smart, powerful woman she is when she shows so little of these qualities, it gets annoying really fast.
The acting also gets really bad at times. Fang Bingbing couldn't really sell her character to me because she flipped between underacting and overacting really often. Maybe the way her character was written didn't help much. Li Zhi's actor did overact sometimes too.

At least the sets and costumes were pretty, but I'd not recommend this. There are more entertaining historical cdramas around.