What a view | In HBO Go’s epic series Legacy, set in 1920s Shanghai, three stepsisters look to take over their wealthy family’s business
- Three stepsisters battle for control of the family business in HBO Go’s epic historical drama Legacy
- Meanwhile on BBC First, Jane Austen’s unfinished last novel is brought to life in another lavish period drama, Sanditon
The latest sumptuous entertainment epic to go back to pre-war Shanghai is HBO Go’s 45-part Legacy, which, beginning in the late 1920s, relates the story of the privileged Yi family.
Qin Lan (Lady Zhongling), Zhang Nan (Lady Zhongxiu) and Wu Jinyan (Lady Zhongyu) star as three stepsisters primed to inherit their wealthy father’s high-end department store.
Not that any such opportunity is likely to be straightforward with siblings from different mothers.
Zhongling, elegant, restrained and level-headed, is challenged by naive, sulky, dissatisfied Zhongxiu, but not nearly as much as she is by Zhongyu, the prodigal daughter of Yi Xinghua (Liu Jun).
Obnoxious, indulged and happy to give servants the runaround, Zhongyu is nevertheless welcomed back into the fold on her sudden return from Singapore. Until, that is, she announces that her arrival in Shanghai has nothing to do with family affections and everything to do with her power play for control of the family company.
Compounding these difficulties are the interesting times in which the Yi clan lives: the stench of war is already wafting through the endless rooms of its mansion, a place so lavishly decorated it can only be bombed, eventually.