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

  

Perfect Match (2025) - Synopsis

 

Drama info:

Title:                      Perfect Match 

Chinese title:         五福臨門 / 五福临门 

                              (Eng translation: "Five blessings come to this house")

Episodes:               36

Genre:                    Family, slice of life, romance, multiple couples

Original network:  Mango TV

Release date:        25 Jan 2025

Airing schedule:    25 Jan 2025 - 11 Feb 2025

Synopsis:

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. 

  

The Double (2024) - Final Review

Final review/rating: The Double (2024) - Revenge is a dish best served doubled and with theatricality 

This is 8.5/10 stars ✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮ from Pandafan🐼

Overall rating:         8.5 Stars Plot:                       8 Stars Acting/cast:            8.5 Stars Couple chemistry:   8.5 stars Music:                    8 Stars Re-watch value:      8 Stars Enjoyment factor:   8.5 Stars

The Double (2024) is a melodramatic rollercoaster of a revenge story, told with lush visuals and an OTT theatricality that may cause the occasional eye roll but somehow works to keep the viewer seated. The narrative is darkly compelling with one high stakes gambit after another, there is the 爽/satisfaction of seeing just deserts being meted out, the villains are interesting, and there is a sensuous slow-burn chemistry between the 'fei chang xiao zhang' '菲常蕭張' CP which made me wish I could borrow Xiao Heng's fan. In concert, this makes for some addictively good viewing.   

There is more than a passing nod to Chinese opera and the gong an公案 'crime case' literary tradition as well. Xue Feng Fei's devious ex-husband scholar Shen Yu Rong has obvious parallels with the infamous scholar Chen Shi Mei 陳世美 from the《鍘美案》/'execute Mei case' who bigamously became Prince Consort and then tried to murder his first wife and two children, and Xue Feng Fei's pet name A'Li 阿狸 and her ultimate switcheroo of identities with the real Jiang Li evokes the《狸猫换太子》/ 'civet cat exchanged for Crown Prince' case. Both are staples of the Justice Bao repertoire. 

However, in The Double (2024) there is no Justice Bao to ensure that justice is served. Instead, there is only Wu Jin Yan's audacious Xue Fang Fei, who must ensure that she and her dead double are avenged. Luckily for the audience, Xue Fang Fei knows how to put on a damn good show as she plays everyone around her like a virtuoso. As for Wang Xing Yue's sexily smoldering Xiao Heng, he is first spectator and than participant in their joint revenge drama, which also doubles as a political chessboard with ramifications beyond the settling of personal wrongs.    

The Double (2024) is far from perfect. There are logic flaws, issues with pacing, places where less would definitely have been more, and some questionable directorial/writing choices, especially in the final arc which left me shaking my head. And while I agree that revenge was taken, I am not certain that justice was truly served in the end. But in the face of these imperfections I found myself imagining Xue Fang Fei cheekily breaking the 4th wall and asking me "are you not entertained?" My answer? Definitely.

SPOILERS AHEAD

  

The Double (2024) - Synopsis

Drama info:

Title:                      The Double

Chinese title:         墨雨雲間 / 墨雨云间 (Eng translation: "Inky rain amidst clouds")

Episodes:               40

Genre:                    Revenge, mystery, romance

Original network:  Youku

Release date:        2 June 2024

Airing schedule:    2 June 2024 - 22 June 2024

Synopsis:

Xue Fang Fei is the talented and much loved daughter of a country magistrate, and wife to scholar Shen Yu Rong.  But one memorable evening, Xue Fang Fei wakes to find herself framed, betrayed, and buried alive...