A rom-com that makes it worthwhile to spend an evening at home

I found the apt antidote to brain-dead Friends on China TV.

Nowadays, large language models, cloud mega-storage modalities, humanoid handy-helper homebound robots and advanced artificial intelligence tech like DeepSeek and ChatGPT afford us fingertip fealty, split-second service and cradle-to-crypt digital deep-tissue metallic massages.

After all, if not for AI, how could I concoct this compo so fast? Wait, what! Ignore that obvious computer malfunction dear reader!

Anyway, the days when we toiled day and night over washboards, vacuum cleaners and chicken coops are distant memories. Now many of us have fuzzy tech washers, autonomous Roombas reconnoitering our rugs and Eleme (Hungry?) apps leaving a baker's dozen eggs outside our door.

The upside of all this laborsaving tech is we now somehow have more time to watch high-quality TV, and less time to communicate with loved ones. Mayhap that's why tech drives many of us to rom-com series, to overcompensate for psycho-spiritual deficiencies in our interpersonal lives and skills.

So I recently discovered a genuine gem of a rom-com show that was shot mainly in Beijing in 2017 and began airing the following year.

There are a whoppingly large 45 episodes, but each installment is simply called E1, E2, etc, without reference to an S, so I'm safely guessing it ran weekly for more than 10 straight months, in that magical last full pre-pandemic year — an era perhaps not too unlike the near century of peace during the "Five Good Emperors" (96-180) in Rome.

Mind you, this series I found hypnotically and addictively must watch. Think Scylla the Sea Siren, seductively perched above the treacherous Aegean shoal. Go ahead, sailor Simon, try not to look. Thought so!

The series is Mr Right (lianai xiansheng in Chinese) and stars a high-end dentist/relationship consultant Cheng Hao (Jin Dong) and hotel manager Luo Yue (Maggie Jiang).

The very first scene has Luo bashing Cheng unconscious with a wine bottle after mistakenly thinking he was taking advantage of a tipsy swimmer. Turns out he was merely giving her CPR after she passed out, with ol' sawbones ending up cooling his heels in the clink. And their romance only gets more fraught and star-crossed as time goes on.

But don't fret, lovebirds, the intensity of their ardor has 45 episodes to work itself out. I hated the IQ-point shaving show Friends of a few moons ago.

Worry not, Mr Right is the anti-Friends antidote to sitcom mediocrity. I truly recommend this captivating Chinese rom-com for its stellar dialogue, twists, turns, tears and titters.