Recently I watched three TV dramas from the 2000s: Da Jiang Dong Qu, Absolute Power, and High Latitude Shudder, in that order, and in between I also watched I Am Not Madame Bovary.
The overall quality of the first two is very high as well, though there are some weak points in places. High Latitude Shudder kept me binging for a full day and night; its 30 episodes are almost entirely free of filler, and it fully immerses you in that high‑latitude province.
After finishing these three, I still wasn’t satisfied and wanted to find similar shows, but after trying a few I didn’t find anything that measured up, so I chose this moment to write something instead. In recent years, In the Name of the People has been well received and is similar in genre to these dramas, but in my view, in terms of the depth of the issues it explores and the richness of its characters, it still falls short of these shows from over twenty years ago.
Da Jiang Dong Qu focuses on the transformation of two officials—two municipal‑level cadres who had rendered outstanding service in urban construction and development. One, in order to “reward himself” for these achievements, and the other, to compensate a soulmate who had waited for him for ten years, accepted part of a “new family start‑up fund.”
Absolute Power discusses the dual nature of work when a cadre holds “absolute power.” On the one hand, in the midst of reform and development, when it’s hard to reach conclusions through discussion and to arrive at absolute answers, such power makes it easier to push through one’s own governing philosophy and policies. On the other hand, once someone has absolute power, even if the cadre strictly disciplines himself, it’s impossible to prevent the people around him from “borrowing” that power on the sly.
High Latitude Shudder uses the shell of a crime‑investigation drama to explore how to evaluate “meritorious officials” who have made mistakes. It raises a very politically incorrect point: that the masses also bear responsibility in the process of an official’s corruption. Wang Zhifei’s detective role in the show reminded me of Huang Jingyu in The Thunder—perhaps this is what such a character is supposed to look like.
On another note, there’s an interesting phenomenon: in all three dramas, there is a “third party” character, but in that era such figures weren’t heavily loaded with value judgments, and they don’t really come across as repulsive. Of course, this is just an observation; from the perspective of core socialist values, there’s nothing wrong with writing such characters to be detestable. In High Latitude Shudder, the two families that are depicted in depth both had a therapeutic effect on my own fear of marriage: the quarrels between spouses that grow out of concern for each other don’t have to be all that off‑putting.