Perfect Match (2025) - Final Review

Final review/rating: Perfect Match (2025) - On the ties that bind and finding perfection in the imperfect 

This is 7.5/10 stars ✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮  from Pandafan🐼

Overall rating:         7.5 Stars Plot:                       7 Stars Acting/cast:            7.5 Stars Couples chemistry:  7.5 stars Music:                    7 Stars Re-watch value:      7 Stars Enjoyment factor:   7.5 Stars

If Perfect Match (2025) was a novel, it could have begun as follows: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a mother in possession of five unmarried daughters must be in want of five good son in laws." However, the drama may not be everyone's cup of tea because it is a fairly blunt portrayal of the Northern Song marriage mart, warts and all. 

Whoever came up with the English drama title did the drama no favours (or was being rather tongue-in-cheek?) because Perfect Match (2025) is not a fluffy romcom in which perfect people pair up neatly. 

Instead, it explores conventional romance tropes with imperfect people. It is almost as if the drama is testing how much it can get away with in making each of the leads unlikeable in some way, though the way the drama is structured means you can pick and choose the trope/pairing of your liking. At the same time as the drama takes us through each of the Li sisters' path to domestic felicity, it also looks at the ties that bind and what it means to be family. 

SPOILERS AHEADS

Plot: A sister for each blessing, plus one more for luck

For a spoiler free synopsis, see mine 👉here.

The Chinese title,《五福臨門》, is an auspicious greeting that translates to "five blessings have come to this house". The "five blessings" come from《書經·洪範》/Book of Documents·Hong Fan, being "一曰壽、二曰富、三曰康寧、四曰攸好德、五曰考終命"/ "First longevity, second wealth, third tranquility, fourth virtue, fifth a good end" and the Li daughters are named for each of these blessings or a variation thereof. 

The drama centres around the Li family. It begins when the widow Madam Li (played by Ni Hong Jie) moves from Luoyang to Bianjing to reunite with her married 2nd daughter Fu Hui (played by Wu Xuan Yi) to make a good living, and most importantly, to find good matches for the rest of her unmarried daughters (four biological, one adopted).

Each have their own particular charms. There's gentle and scholarly 1st Lady, Shou Hua (played by Liu Xie Ning), widowed young and disinclined to marry again; there's clever 3rd Lady, Kang Ning (played by Lu Yu Xiao) who has a strategy for everything; there's ingenue 4th Lady, Hao De (played by Ke Ying); there's fiery tempered 5th Lady, Le Shan (played by Huang Yang Tian Tian), the somewhat spoiled darling of the family. There is also adopted daughter Qiong Nu (played by Ling Mei Shi), whose insecurities make her vulnerable. 

But the Northern Song dynasty marriage mart is not without its hurdles and each of the Li sisters find the path to their 'perfect match' littered with obstacles. Life for the Li family is also made difficult by the fact that they are a family of women, with no husband/brother/son, in a world of men. The Li family is a lovingly close-knit one, with sisters who have each others backs at all times and a fiercely protective mother hen of a Madam Li, who despite her flaws and foibles, loves each of her daughters and is in turn loved by them.

Tropes aplenty

And so, there is a romance trope (or two, or three) for each sister, and in the general order of their appearance in the drama:

• 2nd lady, Fu Hui (played by Wu Xuan Yi) v Fan Liang Han (played by Huang Sheng Chi), with the shrewish wife taming the man-child/playboy husband trope: episodes 1, 2, 5:

• 3rd Lady, Kang Ning (played by Lu Yu Xiao) v Chai An (played by Wang Xing Yue), with the 'enemies' to lovers trope, featuring a clever Elizabeth Bennett-esque schemer and an equally clever Darcy-esque suitor who needs taking down a peg or two: episodes 1 - 10:

• 1st Lady, Shou Hua (played by Liu Xie Ning) v Du Yang Xi (played by Chen He Yi), with the older woman and younger man trope, and the lady and scholar trope: episodes 7 - 19:

• 4th Lady, Hao De (played by Ke Ying) v Shen Hui Zhao (played by Liang Yong Qi), with the sunshine v grumpy/opposites attract trope, marriage of convenience trope. (Honorable mentions to tragic past trope, amnesia trope, workplace trope): episodes 20 - 28:

• 5th Lady, Le Shan (played by Huang Yang Tian Tian) v Yang Xian (played by Dong Si Cheng/Win Win), with the enemies to lovers trope, with an honourable mention to the jilted bride trope: episodes 28 - 36:

• Elder Brother, She Cong (played by Meng En) v Qiong Nu (played by Ling Mei Shi), with the back from the dead trope, and the childhood friendship trope: episodes 35 - 36:

Strengths - flawed protagonists and moving familial bonds

This is a 'something for everyone' type of drama, with multiple leads playing out their respective romances at a slice of life pace. 

For an idol drama, it provides a surprisingly realistic take on the Northern Song marriage mart, where meet-cute moments need to be engineered and where women need to think with their head as well as their heart. 

The drama's greatest strength, in my view, is the way it takes risks and subverts expectations. It presents us with five men who are the epitome of eligible on paper (eg. handsome, rich, scholarly, powerful) but who are in fact not-so-perfect in reality (eg. immature, arrogant, petty and calculative, inflexible, spoilt) and then gives them redeeming features and the chance to redeem themselves. 

Honestly, the matches would be complete mésalliances if the five women were not also flawed (eg. shrewish, prejudiced, unforgiving, naïve, spoilt) and who need to do some serious soul searching in their turn.

It is a battle of the sexes, Northern Song edition. 

To varying degrees, all the pairings are between imperfect people who end up being perfect for each other. Thankfully, all five men end up realising their shortcomings, changing for the better, and becoming besotted husbands who are unafraid to grovel to their better halves as warranted. All five end up literally on their knees at some point to their wives😅. 

Incidentally, one of the funniest things about the drama is the ever increasing "Son-in-Law Alliance" and the 'one of us, one of us!' vibe they give off 😂. One gets the feeling that these men know that the only hope of survival is strength in numbers. 

Those looking for a Northern Song dynasty version of Pride and Prejudice may be disappointed, though Kang Ning and Chai An's battle of wits does have some nods to Austen's Darcy and Lizzy.  

This is especially so with the proposal scene that felt like an homage to Darcy's unfortunate phrasing ("Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections?—to congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?") and needless to say, Chai An got a similar reception to his proposal from Kang Ning.

There is otherwise a superficial resemblance to Pride and Prejudice in that Perfect Match also depicts a family of five daughters, and 3rd Lady, Kang Ning and 1st Lady, Shou Hua share some Lizzy and Jane characteristics respectively. But there the parallels largely end. Madam Li is no Mrs Bennett - although Madam Li may be occasionally absurd and rather venal, she is also a loving tigress of a mother. 

At first Madam Li is rather hard to like, but then the drama draws back the curtain to show how difficult it has been for her with five daughters and a sixth adopted daughter, mourning the youthful loss of her husband Li Chang An (played by guest star Li Yun Rui) as well as her only son, while fending off all the vultures that wish to prey on her family. It really is a testament to her strength of character how well her daughters are each able to face the world in their own ways, and her heart is big enough to hold her sons-in-law as well.

At its core, Perfect Match is a moving family story about the ties that bind: about a family of women in a world of men, the fierce love of a mother for her daughters, and the close-knit bond between sisters who will always be there for each other. 

That moved me most about this drama, and there is a scene which encapsulates this to a T: when Madam Li and all of the sisters show up to back up 5th Sister, Le Shan when she is tricked into marrying to her 'enemy' Yang Xian and the Emperor decrees the marriage, making annulment an impossibility. Not for the Li ladies to leave one of theirs in the lion's den, imperial decree or not! 

(On another note, those that enjoyed The Double (2024) may also enjoy seeing Duke Su/Xiao Heng (Wang Xing Yue) and ex-hubby Shen Yu Rong (Liang Yong Qi) again in the completely different roles of Chai An and Shen Hui Zhao).   

Weaknesses - YMMV

In terms of weaknesses, the drama did itself no favours in starting with the least likeable pairing (shrewish 2nd lady, Fu Hui and immature husband Fan Liang Han), because both characters were difficult to like. I mean Fu Hui literally ate rocks because of her anger management problems and Fan Liang Han is a man-baby. If this pairing did not make the viewer rage quit, then there is a good chance that they will continue to watch, as the drama settles into stride with the Pride and Prejudice-esque pairing of 3rd Lady, Kang Ning and Chai An and their battle of wits, and the subsequent pairings have their own particular charms. 

However, the strength of this drama in subverting the norms and giving the audience protagonists that are not-so-perfect, can also manifest as a weakness. 

Most people watch dramas for escapism, and it is hard to achieve that when the 'heroes' and 'heroines' keep waving red flags. Sometimes a 'joke' gets taken way too far, the gender dynamics can feel uncomfortable from a 21st century vantage point, and the drama tends to play off wife-against-husband domestic violence for laughs.

It is almost as if the scriptwriter thought how far can I push this and still have the audience root for these CPs? Or at least be invested enough in their stories to continue watching? Whether any of the matches are 'perfect' will obviously differ between viewers - this is very much a case of YMMV.

Final thoughts 

🐼: Perfect Match (2025) isn't really the romcom that it was marketed as. 

Rather, it is more of a slice of life that looks at the ties that bind. The love between a widowed matriarch and her daughters, the love between close knit sisters who have each other's backs in a man's world, and yes, the love that can bloom when imperfect people somehow find they complete each other in a way that is ... pretty perfect. 

I found it an enjoyable watch on the whole, though it is probably not for everyone as the faults and foibles of the protagonists may be deal breakers. 

7.5/10 stars ✮✮✮✮✮✮✮