San guo yan yi

Before watching this series, I had read the epic novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and I was well aware of the history surrounding the period after the death of the First Emperor. Usually the movie does not do justice to the novel, but this series does it justice and more. The only exception is the actor chosen to play Lu Bu. An amazing movie. And an amazing period in Chinese history.

Although this is not subtitled, at least not that I've known, it is the best series you will ever see! Rich Chinese historical fiction is brought no farther than reality on TV. Tang Guoqiang does a great job being the wise Zhuge Liang, as does all the other famous actors that star in this series.

This version of the romance of the Three Kingdoms costs a lot of money and takes the longest time to shoot. The producers have a strong sense of responsibility. The scene is grand and the scene is realistic. It is one of the classic works of Chinese TV series.

Obviously, many parts in the original novel was omitted simply because there would never been enough resources to translate every single detail in the original work into actions, even though the condensed version is already one of the longest TV series in China. What is left in the TV series is still enough for you to sit back and enjoy

I got this series from Hong Kong on 58 VCD discs (beautiful special release box-set) and after seeing first episode I put it back on a shelf. Quality of picture is poor, english subtitles are so small even on my 36'' screen hardly readable... But after a while I played it again on big screen tv and altough blockiness and all artifacts from poor encoding showed up even more, tiny english text became easier to read thus I could follow action :-) And what an action it is! By the end of first disc I was so immersed in an ancient historical events of China, it took a sunrise to get me off my lazy chair ;-) I have no idea how historically correct are all shown events, but I must say it is very fascinating to watch it how the Great Empire of China was erected... It seems more like a kind of fantasy for a western person like me, yet it is so similiar to western countries history with familiar if not exactly the same behaviour of Lords of those times; there is treason, there are heroes and anti-heroes... There are plenty of scenes one not being chinese may not fully understand, yet it didnt bother me much. Flow of the action sometimes stutter due to unbeknowst to me reason like concentrating on some (in my opinion) not important details, but make no mistake: it is really *worth* to view this made for tv series, what an incredible experience. Just give yourself a favor: get it on DVD instead ;-)