Saturday, December 1, 2012

'Romance of the Three Kingdoms' TV Series

I begin most days these days by watching a fifteen-minute segment of the 2010 Chinese TV drama 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms' on Youtube. This is an epic undertaking. There are close to a hundred episodes, a little short of one hour each. At fifteen minutes a day that amounts to...well, you do the math. Many, many days.

I'm not suffering, of course. It's a great story, and the acting, production values, etc, are all top notch. This version is different from the 1994 TV series in that it focuses much more on Cao Cao (the antagonist? Anti-hero?). It's still early going, so the perspective may change before long.

Generally speaking, I prefer reading to watching, but about an eighth of the way through RoTK I get lost in the blur of names (most of the many characters have two names, which doesn't help). The 2010 series follows very closely the original text, and is a big help in making sense of this awesome and complex classic.



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