Recommendation cheatpost: watch Nirvana in Fire
don't even read this post, go watch it immediately
*The original version of this post was published on Patreon on December 22, 2022.
I'm breaking my own rule (which I've totally broken before) to bring you a recommendation for a show I haven't actually finished watching yet. In my defense, the Chinese imperial court drama Nirvana in Fire is over 50 episodes long, and I'm trying to savor it; every time a finish an episode I feel a sense of loss that there's less of it to go.
I've been wanting to do a recommendation post about C-dramas for some time now, but I'm really just dipping my toes into them, and I still have a lot to learn. And I don't even know if I can describe the wonders of a show like The Untamed except by a thin scream of perfect joy...but when it comes to Nirvana in Fire, I think I can articulate what makes it so good, and why you should watch it immediately.
Nirvana in Fire consistently tops the list of best C-dramas, and there are good reasons why: it's gorgeous, exquisitely well-acted, subtle, and intricately plotted. I also think it may be a bit more immediately accessible for an American audience than The Untamed or The Rise of Phoenixes. If you're not familiar with C-dramas (and again I'm still just learning), it can take a bit of time to get used to their conventions. I usually find the first few episodes of a fantasy/historical show bewildering—there may be corny flashbacks, and a large number of characters are often introduced quickly, with complex family relationships that take a bit of time to mentally sort out, especially in imperial court dramas like Nirvana in Fire and The Rise of Phoenixes. (The Untamed jumps around in time in its first few episodes and has a confusing resurrection plotline.) The overall structure is also different: C-dramas, especially in the fantasy/historical genres, are often presented in a single season of 50 episodes or so, and each episode sort of ends where it ends, as if you were watching a 50 hour movie broken up at regularly scheduled intervals. But Nirvana in Fire is a bit more episodically structured than some of the others, and it's also one of the best-made shows I've ever seen.
The show reveals certain plot elements slowly, and I want to avoid spoilers, but in brief: Nirvana in Fire is the story of a man who is usually referred to as Mei Changsu, a clever strategist with chronic health problems who is the head of a martial arts organization in the jianghu (this word literally translates to "rivers and lakes" and refers to the generalized world of martial artists and other independent weirdos that exists in the liminal space outside of normal authority.) For complicated reasons, Mei Changsu travels to the capital city of the (fictional) empire of Great Liang, taking the name "Sir Su" in order to pretend that he is at least pretending not to be Mei Changsu. What follows is a series of plots, counter-plots, delicate negotiations, and cool martial arts battles, as Mei Changsu/Sir Su embarks on a complex quest for personal revenge. But it's not just his revenge. Mei Changsu/Sir Su has indeed been wronged, but so have many other people; in the slow process of his vengeance he also helps poor people achieve justice and take down the wealthy aristocrats and court officials who hurt their families and got away with it. If you're thinking "wow revolutionary art/communist propaganda!" it might be (if very subtly), but it's also an imperial court drama, and I think we're likely to end with the good Prince Jing taking the throne.
Prince Jing, for all that he's the classically brave and noble "good prince", is also stubborn, sweet, loyal, maybe not as clever as some, but no fool either—a.k.a., a real and complex person. Every character in this show, even relatively minor ones, gets to be complex and interesting, and is consumed by conflicting motives. Mei Changsu/Sir Su is caught between his desire to achieve his ends at any cost—and keep Prince Jing out of the moral compromises involved—but Mei/Su is also a fundamentally decent guy (or once was a fundamentally decent guy). There's no Game of Thrones-style cynicism or idiot-plotting here: the characters are thoughtful, intuitive, convinced of the justness of their causes, and engaged in constant misdirection. Plots depend on small things like hazelnuts, the handwritten annotations to a travelogue, the stationing of the court ladies during the New Year's ceremony, or just understanding which phrases are likely to throw the emperor into a rage and in which direction. I had to stop watching for a bit recently, because the villains put together a brilliant triple blow against Mei Changsu's side and I became too stressed out to see what happened next. How will our hero respond??? I guess we'll all just have to keep watching.
One other note: Nirvana in Fire is sadly more heterosexual than some other C-dramas (The Untamed is, of course, pure gay excellence) but when you have a beautiful, tragic, and tender romance between a sickly male scholar and a tough lady general, I think you can call that queer-adjacent. Also, the screenshots from Nirvana in Fire would make for an incredible Tumblr moodboard, and I don't know what's more queer-adjacent than that.