This isn’t a full-series review—I stopped at episode five, and frankly, that’s all I could manage. Honestly, I was looking forward to this series; I like Sun Li and generally enjoy crime dramas. With a cast full of notable actors and its connection to the Light On anthology, it should have guaranteed some level of quality—or at least been enjoyable.
Instead, it turned out to be pretty uninspired, and frankly, not worth the time I’ve already invested. A drama like this should deliver suspense, but apart from a brief moment early on with the premise and the question of the police mole, the narrative is laid out so simplistically it felt like a story written for a primary school assignment—A leads to B, B to C, with no real twists or friction. Surely police investigations aren’t that straightforward.
It wasn’t just the narrative structure that was overly simplistic—the characters themselves felt one-dimensional and generic. Opportunities for conflict were introduced but resolved so easily that it became boring. For example, when we first meet Han Qing (Sun Li), she’s assigned an intern she doesn’t want and is angry about it, still fixated on finding her missing partner of nearly two months. But that tension is quickly smoothed over, and Han Qing soon becomes comfortable working with him. Later, Lin Jiajia, the intern, briefly gets upset when she suspects him of being the mole, but he’s fine again so quickly it feels completely unrealistic.
And when Han Qing reports her suspicion of a mole—based on how the investigation’s unfolding (which hardly takes a genius to figure out)—the response is baffling. Instead of prioritizing finding the mole, everyone seems more upset about her daring to suggest there’s an inside man. While some defensiveness is understandable, surely others would be concerned too. Then, when her immediate superior orders her to drop it and stop upsetting people, Han Qing gets briefly angry but soon calms down and resumes working the case. Wouldn’t the logical next step be to wonder if her superior might be involved? Perhaps she could start withholding information or quietly investigating on the side, but she doesn’t do that. Instead, her annoyance fizzles out, and the story simply continues.
It doesn’t help that Han Qing’s partner is portrayed as completely shallow in the flashbacks. All we see of him are idealized moments where he smiles like a boy band TV idol. There’s no sense of his personality or what made their relationship so deep that Han Qing can’t forget him. Maybe that’s why, aside from the occasional outburst, her anxiety over his disappearance feels hollow—she talks about it but rarely carries a genuine sense of urgency.
The thing is, if the story isn’t strong, the least they could do is give the characters some personality to make viewers emotionally invested. Unfortunately, five episodes in, I don’t care if anyone gets killed off—including Han Qing herself.
On top of that, for a drama titled Breaking the Shadows, the aesthetics were surprisingly bright—even in scenes clearly meant to be moody or tense. Maybe the production team was worried that if they lit the alleys, night scenes, and interiors too dimly, viewers wouldn’t be able to see clearly. But they overcompensated so much that faces often appeared flat, and the lighting stripped scenes of any depth or texture. In a series like this, you’d expect more deliberate use of contrast and shadow to build atmosphere and unease. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by Tender Light, which was gorgeously lit and knew how to use light and shadow to reflect emotion. Here, even the visuals felt generic. I couldn’t even enjoy the show on a purely aesthetic level.
I don’t intend to continue watching the series, and I can’t recommend it either even to fellow Sun Li fans. The series did relatively well in China, I believe, but I’m certain that’s largely due to the cast’s strong fanbase and iQiyi’s effective marketing of the Light On series. Unless you’re a big fan of someone in the cast, this is a definite skip for me.
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