Over the past three years or so, there has been an increase in popularity for Chinese dramas, both mainland China and Taiwan. Today, they are more popular than ever before thanks to Netflix investing time and money into building their Chinese dramas library.
As a matter of fact, they recently scored a hitmaker when they earned the international viewing rights of The King’s Avatar, one of the most popular Chinese dramas to air this year.
However, buying the viewing rights of Chinese dramas isn’t the only thing Netflix wants to do pertaining to them. They also want to create their own original Mandarin series.
They already did with their first series Nowhere Men. Now Netflix has created its second Mandarin series, Triad Princess (道千金).
The Triad Princess and the Movie Star
Triad Princess is generally a love story between the daughter of a Triad boss and a popular movie star she so happens to be a huge fan of. It is directed by Neal Wu and Liu Yan-Fu and stars Jasper and Eugenia Lui.
Ni An-Qu, also known as Angie (Eugenia Lui) grew up in the shadow of her Triad father. As a promise to her mother, Angie’s father tries to marry her off to the son of another Triad boss, Jin Yan-Bin also known as Eddie Kim (Tsao Yu-Ning). All Angie wants is to be independent as she craves a life of her own.
Defying her father’s orders, Angie escapes her home and becomes a bodyguard for a famous actress, Ling Yun (Cecilia Choi). She so happens to also run into Cecilia’s “boyfriend” and the other actor under the agency she now works for, Xu Yi-Hang (Jasper Lui). This poses a problem as Angie is a huge fan of Yi-Hang.
As time goes by, Angie learns the unfamiliar world of the glitz and glamour of acting. She may even find true love, a love she wants of her own instead of one arranged by her family.
What many are loving about Triad Princess is that it isn’t exactly restrained to the formula that Chinese dramas are known for. To be fair, if it did, the series might have been like 40 episodes long.
Instead, Netflix kept the series simple yet entertaining. They might have also went with Taiwanese actors and studios more so because they can be more liberal and flexible with their acting. For example, the series does depict an openly gay couple. Such may not be acceptable in a mainland China drama.
Ultimately, Triad Princess is definitely worth the watch. It is only available exclusively through Netflix as it is an original series created by the streaming service.