That's really all you need to know about this drama. With each episode spanning 13-15 minutes, the entire run of 25 episodes is about the length of a full movie.

The show starts with mysterious girl - the main actress - waiting at the platform of the train station. It seems she has done Young Master Du - the main actor - a favour of some kind. He thanked her, and gave her a reward, which she brushed off. Instead, she wanted him to take her to a party he would be participating that night. He agreed.

The story started to unfold steadily from that point onwards, and while I found many questionable points throughout this story, I was lulled into my fangirl mode as a result of a script that constantly fueled the passion of the main leads with breathtaking incidental music and flying silk organza fabric in between kisses. Invisible sparks between them were apparent even if you put a brick partition between them.

Somehow, somewhere during the midpoint, the pacing loses its momentum and steam, and you start to notice implausibilities and errors in the writing and shooting. Master Du, the Young Master's old man, was keen to take a second wife even though he had lost function of his manhood years ago. And how did the young lady know this before throwing herself into this is forever a mystery. There was also an episode where the Big Bang Theory explaining the expansion of the universe was briefly mentioned, but considering that this drama was set in the 1910s-1920s, the writers had gotten ahead of themselves. Because while there had been studies and observations to find out the origins of the universe, but the term "Big Bang" itself actually didn't come into existence until decades later. We fast forward. When faced with a life-and-death situation, the leads were given sufficiently ample time to profess their undying love for each other while everything was burning around them - although if you look closely, the flames around there were as safe as a boyscout campfire. But of course, this scenario is not unique to this drama alone.

"Provoke" indeed lives up to its name - by the end of the final episode, I was struck with the thought that maybe the title was meant to "provoke" the watcher. Because, we all love some delightful clichés in our romance stories, and this drama delivered quite a few of them. Yet it's also one of those dramas that makes you straddle a sofa pillow to your chest as you wish for a passionate kiss - only to be trolled not once, not twice, but three times.