Drama Digest
Li Tang and his wife Ding Mei Xi are an ordinary Chinese couple. He is a taxi driver and she is a teacher in middle school. They reside with their daughter in Xiazhou, a fictional town nearby the seaside city, and are friendly with their neighbors, often helping them with their petty disputes or their groceries.
However, they are hiding a huge secret. Under their guise of normalcy, they are spies. By night, they steal valuable secrets, information which they sell overseas.
But, since it is a time of peace, the company they work for is struggling. They cannot find work, and their civilian jobs barely support a comfortable life. So they often have to resort to extremes, like the wife baiting targets and filming erotic videos, to threaten them for information.
The couple has many problems, such as their daughter’s adolescence, as well as facing a particularly difficult midlife crisis. To add pressure, they also have to deal with their cold-blooded bosses, as well as the particularly strict and efficient head of the National Security Agency, Duan Ning Jiu.
The Feel-Good Part
The overall atmosphere is tense. I found an overarching melancholy in the characters, so the viewer might not find any moment to feel good.
The Disappointing Factor
The series is messy. Different topics are stitched together in a haphazard mess, and the subtitles were not good enough to make non-Chinese viewers understand the drama. Ding Mei Xi seems to know only one way to do espionage, and that is by selling herself and it is strange to see the husband be so okay with it.
In-Depth Analysis
I think the series tried. It is a sharp contrast to James Bond and Ethan Hunt, with their young, fit, and technologically savvy group of specialists. Besides, what they are doing is very illicit; they are not trying to save the world, they are actively trying to endanger the peace they are in to earn a living. In that way it is quite refreshing since the characters are actually what spies are; not good-looking, fresh-out-of-the-gym guys who attract a lot of attention, but ordinary people with dark secrets.
The spies we see onscreen are aging, and have lost their strength and agility. What holds them together is their professionalism and experience. As a sort of ying-yang depiction, the people they are up against, belong to a well-funded organization, young, and headed by a very intelligent head.
I liked the humanity in each of the characters. Duan Ning Jiu has a family, and her home life is seriously affected by the pressure she is in. Tang isn’t young anymore, often nagged at by his wife, and the pair are often exasperated with the teenage blues of their growing daughter. The characters are very well acted.
And the show is not black and white, it shows the opposing two sides of the story, before anything else. So the series has a lot of depth. I think, with better direction, it would have been better.
Star Power
Tan Zhuo and Guo Jing Fei are the stars of this show as Ding Mei Xi and Li Tang. I loved their performances. Yan Bing Yan as Duan Ying Jiu is cool and ambitious, very believable both as a person of duty and a woman with a longing for family. Ning Li was terrifying as Lin Yu.
Overall Opinion
The series is a little hard to understand, but it does have potential and I would recommend people to watch it if they have patience.
