The Water Margin (1998)

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

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)

Trailer

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