I've been waiting and looking for a series like The sword and the Brocade and I have to admit that it's very hard to find such a good Chinese costume drama like that one. The Lady in the Butcher's House had a lot of potential, but unfortunately something went wrong and an interesting story was wasted.
The story of a couple that at first glance has nothing to do with each other, and turns out to be a harmonious duo. Xu Qing Jia was orphaned at a young age but with a help of family friend he manages to go to the university and become one of the best scholars. As his promise to the family says, he marries Hu Jiao, the daughter of a butcher's family. Hu Jiao does not know how to read and write so these two cannot be much more different. She is fiesty - he doesn't know how to hold a sword. Qing Jia devoted himself to serve the people like his father and wants to reform the schooling system. With the help of his strong wife they manage to discover many unholy secrets of officials in the Northern Song Dynasty.
The story sounds very interesting and I was interested in it's development from the first episode. But something around episode 8-9 started to happen with this show and it stopped being interesting. The story stopped introducing explanations to previous situations, and added new problems, the characters seemed not to develop but to persist in their exaggerated moods. I got to episode 15, which is almost halfway through the series, and nothing seemed to improve.
Drama started off pretty strong. The story was above average for a chinese period drama and I loved how they switched male and female with their "gender right behaviours". I have swallowed first 4 episoded in 1 evening, it was that good and they were very promesing. The character dynamics between the leads were pleasant and funny to watch. I enjoyed them and the family as much as their going towards each other and earning mutual trust after their arranged marriage. All of it allowed producers to avoid some clichès to which chinese dramas have a big tendencies 😅
I dropped Lady in the Butcher's House simply because I felt extremely bored by the realistic tempo. Funny how the thing you liked at first changes into your enemy. As I mentioned at the start, about episode 8-9 the story started to unfold so slowly that I was falling asleep 🙈😣 It all fits the realism which producers seem to go for but unfortunatelly it killed me. When drama has 36 episodes each 45 minutes you have to give it a tempo.... but not a tempo of a turtle!
If the drama would keep it up to first episodes I would definately watch it all and maybe even give a high rating but in this situation I cannot go further than 3/10. Half of drama was prolonged, characters were stuck and story was frozen. The development of the story is one of the most important elements of the series and even if the actors are good and the series seems interesting from the description, if this development is futile then the whole series is a flop 😔 I'm sad that this happened to this show because I really wanted to see it. Maybe someday 😏 having good wifi and waiting a few hours for a plane at the airport, I'll go back to Lady in the Butcher's House and finish it. For now, I have an upcoming wedding, so other priorities are entering the dance floor 😇😁
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