Nirvana in Fire 琅琊榜

yifu posted on this: China TV-series 琅琊榜, which has the odd translated title of Nirvana In Fire (wonder which publicist thought that up) (see also http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Nirvana_in_Fire); I just search for "langyabang" on Youtube.

It's a serial-numbers-filed-off version of ... costumes and setting looks like it could be 3rd or 4th century China, where there were still many small countries and territories, a time when kingdoms rose and fell in a matter of decades. This one features a fictionalised country of Liang, into which comes an ethereal-looking (to use yifu's description) strategist played by Hu Ge (yes, really), who is sickly but brilliant in mind. He goes to Jinlin, the capital of Liang, with a hidden agenda and backstory that slooowly becomes clear as he strategises one of the princes to the throne.

I think it's a bit of an unusual side of Chinese culture (even though in the series, Liang - and other countries - haven't been heavily Sinicised) that makes you think sickly scholars are totally cool, even though the country of Liang, like its neighbouring country, is supposed to prize itself on martial arts and the physical prowess of its armies. Luckily this is fiction, or I would totally side-eye the interplaying concepts. The court intrigue isn't just confined to the harem, but to different departments of the government and army - and the characters are multi-dimensional, all with different motivations for their plots. There's a bit of romance, but overall the series is quite focused on stuff like loyalty, integrity, brotherhood, and so on. Add villains that you love to hate, lots of action scenes, people talking in occasional mock literary Chinese (they probably dumbed it down a lot for plebs like me), georgeous clothes, and I'm there.