Duke of Mt. Deer
Unlike other "Duke of Mount Deer" adaptations, Wong Jing writes Duke of Mount Deer with heavy intent. Dicky Cheung stars as XiaoBao, from low status in society in the first few episodes to a duke. I personally agree with all the good comments from other people's reviews. For the hideous comments, I can explain it.
The clothing of XiaoBao wearing hay expresses the status in the society of himself. Even when he gets aristocratic, he wears hay showing the audience that he is not cocky or that he is more comfortable of being himself when he was just an anonymous person in his hometown. Just as well, wearing hay is dissimilar from all the characters. By doing so, it expresses that XiaoBao is a journeyman striving for more wealth. Not just hay, his clothing is passionate. He tends to wear his white clothing during scenes that are passionate too. It might be seen that wearing white is ordinary. However, it shows XiaoBao comes with serene, dignity, and optimistic. It is tremendously different from Hong Hei wearing gold for monarch, Chun Gun Nam wearing black for coolness and even LungYi wearing prominent red when she was in the "Dragon Club" to a cherish colors when she becomes a wife.
Come to it, all of XiaoBao's wives do not have to be attractive. If you're a spectator believing so, then you're all erroneous. I do not see "Duke of Mount Deer 1998" have all of XiaoBao's wives pretty. In addition, the spectators are only watchers, not a character in the story to like or become aversion in choosing XiaoBao's wife. As long as XiaoBao loves them, that is all that matters.
Other reviewers wrote that HongHei and XiaoBao are not really friendly with each other. I totally disagree with that comment. In episode 5, Hong Hei and XiaoBao were drawing pictures and fooling around Hong Hei's meeting room and his bedroom. Is that not expressing friendship? When Hong Hei gets less fooling around after that night it is because he matures to be more of king. There is no way that a servant and a king could become friends. And amazingly they actually could. Hong Hei gets less and less trustful of XiaoBao because he is a member of Heavenly Sword Club which in fact are the rebellion or revolutionist. In the end, or even for the whole series, XiaoBao has always been faithful to HongHei. His sacrificing for Heavenly Sword Club and putting his whole family in danger shows this.
Let us go back to why I wrote heavy intense. Well, it is somewhat deserving for him becoming a duke. I mean, especially on the episode in which XiaoBao was thrown by tomatoes which give me a humungous understanding on XiaoBao's harsh young life. Despite challenging obstacles with the relationships of XiaoBao's wives, the series intensifies with two race groups (HonYeun and MoonChalYeun) and XiaoBao is jammed between. It becomes incredibly intensified when XiaoBao says self-deprivation speeches whenever someone is at a higher society status. An example will be in one of the episodes when he says "he can never do substantial things so he rather desire doing diminutive things". I found that the series is at the boundary of its intensity whenever the king presumes XiaoBao's genuine penetration in order for peace.
I have made it sound like the series is at perfection. Yet, as other reviewers had wrote, the same settings were used over and over again in many episodes. I found it repetitive and uninteresting. Similarly to what another reviewer said about finding the episode spending too much time on the characters speaking ineffective things that end up going no where. Major error to this series is timing. I have no idea that XiaoBao grows his hair long again so quickly after being a monk.
Overall, The Duke of Mount Deer is written to electrify the viewers in an extreme way making the series comic-wise. Though it tends to abuse the Cantonese language with a character unedify or what-so-ever in XiaoBao's roles. When you put this series to a larger scale and relative connection with China's modern politics, it can be moral. Anyway, this series had 36 points on K-100 rating list about two and one quarter watchers in Hong Kong. Now that is something we can all agree on. Hence, this series deserves 5 out of 5 stars.
