Underplayed Gems

The Water Margin (1998)

The Water Margin poster
Original title
水浒传
Directed by
Zhang Shaolin
Genre
drama
Country
People's Republic of China
Length
1 season, 43 episodes
Rated
TV-Y
Rating
9.1 of 10 from 19 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this series is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

This series adapts the classic Chinese novel about a band of outlaws in the Song dynasty. It focuses on their fights and struggles, showing a harsh and realistic version of their story without heroic glamour.

epicgrittyslow-burnhistoricalmelancholicgroundedviolentsolemn

What happens

The Water Margin (水浒传) is a 1998 Chinese television series adapted from the 14th-century classical novel of the same title by Shi Nai'an. It was produced by CCTV and first broadcast in Mainland China in January 1998. The series also featured action choreography by Hong Kong action director Yuen Woo-ping. Liu Huan sang the ending theme song for the first 30 episodes while Peng Liyuan, the current First Lady of China, sang for the last 13 episodes. The adaptation proved to be deeply controversial among its viewers, garnering mixed reviews, because its realism required the deletion of most of the heroic-romantic elements of the original work, and some criticized that it had "restored" the original work's comradely spirit of "pulling out a knife to help one another in times of difficulty" into lawless banditry and furthermore "constituted a distortion of the original work’s plot and narrative". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.