Chinese detective crime series is a smash hit

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The Chinese detective crime show "Baiye Zhuixiong" has been praised for getting such a high score and not fooling its audience with the non-sense stories.

"Baiye Zhuixiong" has now scored an unprecedented 9, in comparison to the Doctor Foster Series Two’s 9.4 and the 8.3 of previous Chinese TV smash hit "In the name of people" on douban.com, a major Chinese film rating platform.

The screenshot of 'Baiye Zhuixiong' home page on douban.com.

"Baiye Zhuixiong," meaning chasing murder regardless day and night, is a blend of suspense, kidnapping, drug and arms trafficking, criminal investigation, and hardcore. The original crime series, released in late August, reached 50 million online views four hours after it was released. The number of views surged over one billion in just 16 hours.

The show, is only broadcast online by China’s YouTube-like Youku, runs to 32 episodes and stars not so many big names in China’s showbiz, which Chinese audience can only find a familiar face in the leading role – Pan Yueming.

The drama tells the story of the cop captain Guan Hongfeng, with the fear of darkness, all the way to detect criminal cases and find the murder to have his brother’s name cleared.

Stage photo of Baiye Zhuixiong /Photo via jiemina.com.

One of the two playwrights of the show is the justice practitioner in the first line. Zhi Wen, born in a family with a strong legal background, is a litigation court lawyer and is fond of reasoning. Co-creators are full of people working in the relevant departments. They sit together to analyze criminal cases and that’s why the show has been praised for its solid story and insider perspectives.

The show took a total of 120 days to film and one and half months to modify the script. The director Wang Wei said it has not yet reached the standard of the British drama. "We’re now ranking 9, but if you compare that to British TV series, there is a lot of space for growth. This score may be the tolerance of domestic drama.”

Compared with Wang’s modest self-evaluation, at least the audience gave positive feedbacks.

The screenshot of a comment under "Baiye Zhuixiong" home page on douban.com.

One comment said, "I admit I underestimated the quality of the online drama nowadays, I still have the impression of its rough-made quality and batch jobs. But this, characters are full of their own soul and they are more like a real human."