Revenged Love - Season 1

“Revenged Love“ created an incredible hype, and as I'm writing this review, four months after the series ended, social media are still full of references to it. This hype has many reasons: there is the technical perfection of the production, there is the exciting story, good writing and directing, but most of all there is a cast that has made fans around the world _addicted_ (sorry, not sorry for the pun). It is great that Chinese BL is back, after a long break since the iconic “Addicted“ series due to censorship. In 2023/4, this drought ended, with series like “Stay with me“ and “Blue Canvas of Youthful Days“, indicating what Chinese series can do. After Chi Cheng (Tian Xu Ning), heir of a wealthy family, stole Suo Wei’s (Zi Yu) girlfriend, Suo Wei takes revenge by seducing Chi Cheng. As experienced BL fans would expect, their relationship turns into real - and mutual - love, albeit with lots of obstacles in the protagonists’ way. The lead actors sky-rocketed to international stardom, and, what may even be more surprising, against all odds to stardom in China, too.

I think this has got to be the series with the most hype around it that I've ever seen. I don't know if it is because of its country of origin or that it shows things that country normally censors, but I saw stuff from this one all over the place. I'm sure this will not be a popular opinion, but I honestly do not think it deserved all of the hype that it got. Was it bad? No; was it great? Also, no. I won't give away the ending, but you have the one 'straight' guy try to get back at his ex-girlfriend by seducing her current boyfriend and the entire series is all about farce and manipulating people and honestly the premises is not really believable to begin with and it never really goes beyond that as it covers a two year period in their lives. On top of that all of the plots (main and sub) all kind of end, there's no big resolution to any storyline, they all kind of fizzle out. It's like the writer said 'here's a cool idea, let's include it', but had no way how to write it. Yes, there were some cute moments and some funny ones too, but this wasn't really a memorable series and the main characters spent their time having deep conversations with their friends and not each other. I did mostly enjoy it and I don't regret watching it, but it's not one that I will probably ever watch again.