This has a great deal going for it in the plot department. You can tell when a drama is an adaptation of a good book, because beautiful, twisted plots like this take a long time to create, far longer than the normal scriptwriter can afford. Believe me I know, I’ve written them and this one is more intricate than mine. It binds together a rainbow of strands to make a very colourful and complex tapestry, leaving no straggly ends fraying at the edges. This is its outstanding strength and also its dramatic weakness.

In a book, you can take your time to unfold the details and mix them in with a range of emotional and descriptive threads and varied dialogue. But when you make a drama out of it, what you are in danger of doing is simply using the characters to explain the plot, so that you lurch from one explainy description to another. Particularly when you don’t have the budget to flesh it out with action scenes and speccie fights. And unfortunately, that’s what happened here.

The cost was two dimensional characters standing around telling each other what just happened and what the motives of the protagonists were, leaving no time to really develop their relationships. As a result the romance was very tepid and sparse, so don’t go into this expecting fizzing fireworks, it’s definitely damp squibs in the chemistry department. I found Su Xiao Tong’s characterisation of Chu Chu really lacked credibility and strength making her a very soft and ineffectual heroine. She acted as though her early life had been easy and privileged rather than the tough experience portrayed in the drama.

The highlight though was the mesmerisingly delicious performance by Mu Hai Hu as the grand eunuch Qin Luan. I loved his obsequious malignancy and his high pitched whining voice. A real standout performance.

It kept me interested up to about half way through, but after that it started to become very heavy going.