Private Galaxy (Chinese Series)
Liang Chen gives Wei Xing the inspiration to finish a new song, finally delivering something his fans have spent ages waiting for. Their romance is also supposed to help both men grow beyond the damage and loneliness in their pasts. There is material for a story there, yet this BL does so little with it that I repeatedly found myself wondering whether I was watching an actual narrative at all.
The flashbacks explain what each man brings to the relationship. For Wei Xing, a wealthy childhood offered very little companionship, and that isolation has left him aching for a genuine connection. Liang Chen’s confidence has taken a much more sustained battering: he witnessed a death as a child, received no support from his parents for his early interest in modeling, endured bullying throughout school, and then faced more mistreatment from seniors in college. Falling for each other eventually gives both of them a push toward personal growth.
That relationship begins with an accidental kiss on a bridge one night: Wei Xing is a famous singer, while Liang Chen is an ordinary guy. They meet again a year later, when Wei Xing is looking for models for his fashion label. He spots Liang Chen, offers him work, and, to everyone’s astonishment, actually gives him the contract. With no experience to draw on, Liang Chen struggles at first. The team cannot understand the choice, but Wei Xing keeps supporting him, helping him become more confident. Their growing time together develops into feelings, and eventually their chemistry attracts the tabloids’ attention. Both men continue to maintain that their connection is purely professional.
Unfortunately, describing those developments makes the series sound far more coherent than it feels to watch. Again and again, I had the impression that individual scenes had been shot in isolation and assembled afterward in the hope that their proximity would somehow produce a story. The whole thing is painfully flimsy, stretched across eight episodes of 15 minutes each when a 20-minute short could easily have covered it.
From what I have read, only four episodes were filmed originally, with another four hurried into existence later for reasons I cannot explain. Whatever prompted that decision, the production history would not bother me if the finished series worked. It comes so close to being unwatchable that I cannot understand why anyone made it in the first place.
The leads do have some chemistry, and neither is a bad actor. Their performances are perfectly adequate, although I sometimes genuinely lost track of which man I was looking at: their height, physique, and even their facial features are so alike. Somehow, despite the acceptable acting, what reaches the screen is still excruciatingly awkward. The kisses are especially dreadful, with mouths meeting as though neither person has any feeling or life in them.
Even the show’s name makes no sense to me. By the time I sit down to write about it, spending any more of my own time on this already feels pointless. Skip it without hesitation. (1/10)