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《唐朝诡事录》 (Strange Tales of the Tang Dynasty) - Review
English subs here. Note, you have to be in (or VPN into) a non-US region to watch all the episodes.
TL;DR - Solid 4 stars out of 5. Some mystery details needed more explaining. Some of the supernatural stuff is hand-waved away as "illusions" without really explaining how the illusions are generated. Also, animals don't work like that.
Non-TL;DR version:
The general premise of the show is 苏无名 (Su Wuming), the student of Judge Di, and 卢凌风 (Lu Lingfeng), a young general, team up to solve seemingly supernatural crimes while trying to keep their heads above the churning political waters of a succession battle between the princess and prince.
The plot is mostly focused on making the mysteries interesting and layered, and while the murderer's motivations are sympathetic, their ethics are clearly batshit crazy. I appreciate that the show is unequivocal about who is and isn't innocent and standing by the firm belief that just because the world is unfair, well, that's no excuse for doing mass murder, especially when the murders involve innocent people who get caught in the crossfire.
What's interesting is that the story doesn't give the good guys an easy out of being able to choose an obviously "this is the morally correct" option. Everyone is on a scale of gray, some grayer than others, but you can always see the very human motivation that drives each decision. Everyone has character flaws that come back to either bite them in the butt at some point or at the very least make their situation more difficult. (You can disagree with whether the consequences are of a reasonable proportion, but there are always consequences for each character's decision.) And the only characters who are truly blameless are children, because...well, brain development.
Of course, the show is not without some weaknesses. As mentioned in the TL;DR, the mystery tricks aren't always fully explained, too much reliance on "illusions" being able to do physically impossible things. Also a huge reliance on animal behaviors that...well, aren't how animal behaves. The latter issue might be a professional peeve, but the show really over estimated a) how trainable animals are and b) how fast a reptile moves. Like, yes, I understand usually people underestimate how fast reptiles can move and get themselves bitten by wild animals, but also biomechanics and metabolism are also limiting factors so...no, just no.
The romance is a bit of a mixed bag. The alpha couple's relationship development is actually pretty smooth. Nothing too egregious and it's great that the girl gets to contribute to mystery solving with her art skills by detecting counterfeit bookkeeping (through her knowledge of inks) and using her background as the daughter of a high ranking official to point out lies that otherwise wouldn't have been noticed by people without experience in the higher social circles. The beta couple's relationship, however, comes out of nowhere. Not only is the love interest introduced in the last third of the show, but the emotional development got so little screen time, the relationship feels forced into existence just to make sure both male leads are definitely, definitely heterosexual to avoid any misunderstandings.
As fans noted, the two female love interests are effectively gender-swapped versions of the other man of the male co-lead partnership, which does nothing to tamp down on the BL shipping. And while the alpha female love interest does contribute significantly to the mystery solving (a good thing!), the beta female love interest, unfortunately, is constantly stuck in the male co-lead's shadow, because both characters are casted into the "bodyguard" role and there's only so much fighting in a mystery story that can go around. The structural problem is especially exacerbated by the fact that the general has a (very competent) disciple, so there's even less reason for the second female love interest to stick around as a character. This results in said character disappearing for huge chunks of time and the story has to break up the original team in the final two mystery arcs due to overlapping roles.
The political fight between the princess and prince that serves as the backdrop of the show is also a bit choppy. In season one, the princess and her faction is portrayed as far, far more ruthless than the prince, and the narrative fell back on "maternal love" to win sympathy points from the audience. And while the prince was "ruthless" to his subordinate, it was out of "necessity" to protect said subordinate, thus giving the prince a moral excuse and justify why it's a good thing that historically it was the prince who inherited the throne rather than the princess. From what I understand, the second season shows a little bit more of the prince's ruthlessness, so we'll have to see. As of season 1, there seems to be a bit of sexism towards women in positions of political power, but that's hardly surprising.
The highlight of the show's character development is definitely the two male co-leads. Their partnership carried the story and for the most part the two actors played off well against each other. Whenever the two are discussing ideas and throwing out hypotheses and trying to help each other out, the story is always more engaging. Canonically, it's a purely platonic relationship. Even if the love interests were cut out, the relationship is still obviously platonic. The two get off on the wrong foot and learn to respect and appreciate each other. The slightly antagonistic bitching grows into friendly bitching and joshing, which is just really nice to see. If the audience wants to ship that, it's there. But the show isn't shoving in any awkward "shipping" moments in for the sake of BL viewership. The emotions are simply there for the audience to interpret as they will.
So, to conclude, fun show, great duo partnership, one romantic couple developed in a way that wasn't annoying while another romantic couple felt forced into the show for no reason other than to pair the spare. The depiction of the court politics was unsympathetic to women in power, so it's a bit...rough. Worth a watch if you like to watch two guys growing and learning from each other.