Mystery in The Palace Review

Mystery in the Palace

Cast listed from top to bottom left to right

Catherine Hung as Tong Si Ku ( hah her name is Si Ku)
Zhang Dan Feng as Crown Prince Yin Reng
Liu Ting Yu as Crown Prince Consort
Mu Ting Ting as Consort Hui
Kevin Cheng as Prince Ge Tai
Gan Ting Ting as Princess E Dan and her own daughter Han Xiang
Michelle Yim as Empress
Bernice Liu as Consort Wang
Fang Shu Zhen as Chun Zhu
Florence Tan as Consort Xuan
Ni Qi Min as Emperor Kang Xi
Eddie Cheng as Prince Ta Er

Taking a studying break right now, and what better to do but vent about this series! There will not be a summary on here, just my OWN opinion of the whole series; I will let you dread through the series yourself if you haven't already! The first attempt to watch the series episode by episode, but as it progresses I find it very draggy, I skip episode 16-25 and still nothing major happened. This venting session will contain major spoilers, so if you plan on watching this series, I would suggest you stop reading now. My first attraction to the series is because of Liu Ting Yu and Florence Tan, it's rare to see them in series nowadays, to have them both stars in a series together was a bonus for me! However, it was a major disappointment! I felt that both actresses did a good job at what was needed for the characters! The problem was not with the acting, it was the characters! Overuse and overplay type of palace drama characters! I’d really hope for something more refreshing, but it came out as whining with jealousy over attention and power!

It’s now time to shift to the main actor Kevin Cheng and Gan Ting Ting. I absolutely hated Kevin Cheng’s character! I hate these types, the weak emotional, crying over spilled milk kind of character! Okay, I’ll give his character a little slack since he did find out he was adopted, but really to have him get beaten up in almost every second episode? And why did they cast him in this role? The character was supposed to be 21 years of age! Don’t get me wrong Kevin is a very handsome guy, but he is not 21 years old! It didn't’ help that they cast Florence Tan, Bernice Liu and Mu Ting Ting to play his uncle’s wives made it more out of place. I didn't feel like his character did much for the whole show but ran around and got beaten up and cry and cry, even till the end!


As for Gan Ting Ting, she is prettier in the beginning when she portrayed E Dan, it suits her more than Han Xiang, maybe it was the hair. I think they tried to make her look youthful, with the pigtails flopping around, didn't work for me! Her character reminds me of Sam Ho from Beyond the Realm of Conscience, the goody two shoe types, nothing special! There was not much character development! I also didn't understand why they let all these maids out of the palace so easily and when they were found (or framed) to commit a crime no one got their head chopped off! To think of it, no one really dies in the show, they either got sent to prison or the cold chamber.

Let’s talk about the whole mystery! It wasn't big enough or exciting enough for me to surround the whole series around it, since I figure out who the murderer was in the middle of the show when Ge Tai real mother showed up! And it was very unsatisfying of how it was reviled, of course, the coward Emperor didn’t even have the decency to reviled that he drunkenly had a night of passion with his brother’s fiancé! I don’t think Emperor was going to execute him for his crime since the Emperor was the one who caused the whole misunderstanding between Ta Er and E Dan. We don’t know since the guy committed suicide. All in all, if you really have nothing better to do might as well kill time with this series, another bonus is that you can see many Hk stars in here, it’s like watching a TVB series with mainland guest stars! Heh

Random facts- The theme song is sung by Liu Ting Yu herself she has quite a pretty voice. Catherine Hung and Zhang Dan Feng are actually husband and wife in real life. Kevin Cheng stardom shoots to the top after his portrayal of 4th prince from BuBu Jing Xin/Scarlet Heart, he is not one of the highest pay TV artists in HK and very popular in mainland China now.