Chen Yuqi and Dylan Wang are delightful pairing as a imperial consort and eunuch respectively in this faux historical romantic comedy. It is a quirky mix of genres that don't always blend well especially in the final phase of the drama, where the show feels like it outstays its welcome. The show is at its best when it doesn’t take itself seriously and remain within its comedic purview.

The series starts off with plenty of hilarity as Chen Yuqi’s Bu Yinlou attempts to survive the rough and tumble of palace machinations using her wits. She’s an inveterate gambler and manages to get extricate herself from various problems sometimes with the aid of Dylan Wang’s Xiao Duo, a supposed eunuch in charge of Zhaoding Bureau and other law enforcement agencies. The leads are suspicious of one another’s intentions at first but later become allies and eventually lovers. The banter between them is a hoot especially when they misunderstand each other and there are many laugh out loud moments in those early days.

The pair inevitably find themselves in a love triangle with the recently crowned emperor Murong Gaogong (Peter Ho) whose obsession with Yinlou is… incomprehensible all throughout. He evolves from being a timid prince to a raving  paranoid megalomaniac — a caricature rather than a fully fleshed out character. Even when he finally finds out that Yinlou and Xiao Duo are doing the hanky-panky behind his back, he reactions are insanely pathetic. He barely knows Yinlou except for a brief childhood encounter and yet he expends all his energies in obsessively holding on to her to the point of absurdity. As a result of not having his way with her, and suffering one disaster after another he spirals into self-destructive madness. Even though he suffers the fate of all cuckolds, there’s not a lot that’s sympathetic or likeable about him. Instead he is primed as a figure of scorn.

Where the show goes wobbly is when it tries to be serious and soapboxes about the freedom for individuals to choose within the palace walls. Theirs is a forbidden love but Yinlou seems an unlikely mouthpiece that speaks truth to power. The downside to this is that it takes one right out of the experience because let’s face it, nobody cares anything about individual freedom in the days of emperors. Luckily for them, the leads have the intelligence and enough friends to help them with Yinlou’s jail break. But by then, one has had a gutful of a very deranged monarch whose grasp on reality diminishes daily. Where would the opinionated leads be if they had no brains? Dead, would be one possibility. Or contentedly living out the rest of their lives in the palace eating and drinking from the emperor’s table grateful for not being dead.

In some ways I’m surprised that this got made. Or that it even got past the scissor happy censorship with as much as it did. Many of the passionate scenes purportedly got the chop and yet when Yinlou slaps the emperor she gets away with it. Her statements railing against his tyranny are far more radical than all the snogging between the leads. Perhaps it’s the low budget nature of this beast. I can only speculate that those who let this pass think somehow that hardly any one will be watching this and an emperor who is over-the-top crazy can’t possibly have any modern day parallels.

All in all, it’s far more enjoyable when one suspends all manner of disbelief.