The Ghost Bride on Netflix: a Taiwanese-Malaysian thriller set in 1890s Malacca
- The show follows Pan Li Lan, a young woman chosen to wed Lim Tian Ching, the only catch is that he is dead
- Thus unfolds a murder mystery that crosses corporeal and spiritual planes, all set in colourful, colonial Malacca
A distant, equally talented yet more playful cousin of Agatha Christie surely haunted the creation of six-part Taiwanese-Malaysian thriller The Ghost Bride, now streaming on Netflix.
Colonial Malacca, 1890: stubborn, spirited Pan Li Lan (Peijia Huang) is fighting to preserve her independence by refusing to be married off. Already considered on the shelf at 20, she is nevertheless identified as the perfect match for Lim Tian Ching (Kuang Tian) by his wealthy, scheming mother.
There’s one trifling wrinkle in the plan: Tian Ching is dead, which seems to put him at a disadvantage when it comes to married life. His mother, however, is adamant, on pain of his missing out on reincarnation, that he must not remain a lonely denizen of the ethereal world. The bait for Li Lan, and therefor her father, is a bailout for his failing spice business if she becomes a “ghost bride”.
So far, so unsettling. But then for Li Lan come psychological terrors provoked by nightmares featuring her father dying and bug-eyed spectres dripping blood. Recovering her pre-vision composure, she is told by Tian Ching’s apparition that he was murdered. Shockingly, it seems he was dispatched by a member of the family household at the behest of an unidentified close relation.
So Li Lan becomes a reluctant sleuth on Tian Ching’s case, in exchange for his help in restoring her father’s health. At which point we are introduced to the line-up of unusual suspects. These include Li Lan’s childhood crush, the dashing Lim Tian Bai (Ludi Lin), who has recently returned from Hong Kong and, as a corporeal suitor, would appear a better bet as a husband than the expired Tian Ching.
Li Lan must struggle with impossible choices in her new career – but at least they stave off the nuptials.
Strike Back’s final season delivers volcanic action, rapid plot twists
And why change a winning team, or even formula? Strike Back still does exactly what it has always said on the tin, fulfilling promises of volcanic action, rapid plot twists and the dispatching of all manner of vile villains – Albanian gangsters figure prominently in the current caper – our team of tough nuts frequently rolling with some testing punches themselves.
Not that the Albanians require the gruesome bioweapon for their own amusement. They just want the cash; the virus they are happy to sell to a Muslim terrorist group sworn to punish the Western powers it believes ignored war crimes committed during the 1990s Balkans conflict.
For a series inspired by the career of a former SAS sergeant, Strike Back is surprisingly deft at sending up the clichés prevalent in ethnic and religious profiling. The “swarthy skin plus beard plus baseball cap plus backpack equals fundamentalist suicide bomber” attitude that gives big cities the jitters these days isn’t always helpful. And it can take a rollicking shoot-em-up such as this to remind us that the bad guys no longer stand out from the good quite as conveniently as they used to.
