Joy of Life

Good story and good acting. The Actors are into the character. The story keep us wonder and want to continue to watch it. Go to watch it now.

The star of the show is Fan Xian who is played excellently by Zhang Ruo Yun and my review is based on the first two series as there is no confirmed date for series three. It is set in the ancient empire of Qing and the story begins with Fan returning to the capital after years of exclusion after an assassination attempt on him. He has memories of the future and his mother who he never knew brought great knowledge to the kingdom. Once he is in the capital he soon rises through the ranks and his support is pursued by powerful factions within the court. The story goes along at a steady pace and has many twists and turns with a great supporting cast and good character development and I would have liked more inclusion of some of the interesting side characters. Well worth a watch but remember there are a lot of episodes and more to come.

Wonderful historical costume drama! What really captured my attention to this series was the comedic references throughout each episode: very well integrated into each characters' execution. Similarly, Zhang Ruoyun was brilliant as Fan Xian: his character's expressions and dialog were extremely entertaining and amusing-exceptional performance. Likewise, there were many high-quality, multiple-layered characters that contributed to the amazing production of this narrative: fantastic supporting cast. Fabulous CG worldbuilding, writing and story. Loved the journey! Cheers!

Even if you read the novel, you are not sure how the story unfolds. Scriptwriter adapted flexible, familiar fantasy story becomes new, charismatic to the last minute. Look forward to the sequel. However, this is not a romance, so don't rely on romantic scenes or chemical reactions between couples. Drama worth watching.

Awesome, entertaining show with a story that offers lots of surprises. Nice pacing with good balance of light & heavy-hearted segments, while engaging you to the end. A great cast who gave solid performance in both older and younger roles. You care about the characters and about what happens to them.

Beautiful costumes, beautiful hair & makeup (don't know how good they are until you've seen other lesser shows).

Well-executed martial art. I have watched gazillion martial art movies and TV series but there were fight scenes in Joy of Life that really impressed me.

I would have given it 9.5 stars if I could. Not 10 because the first 10/12 episode dragged at time. However, once you've passed that stage the story continues to get more intriguing and exciting.

Can't wait till Season 2 is up!