Movie stars Zhou Xun and Jelly Lin head the cast of Imperfect Victim, a new mainland Chinese drama series that focuses on workplace sexual harassment and leads to a rape trial.
Zhou (Cloud Atlas, The Silent War, Painted Skin) plays a lawyer who steps in to represent the character played by Lin (The Mermaid), who alleges assault by her boss at work. He is portrayed by TV veteran Liu Yijun (Nirvana in Fire, The Pretender). The case becomes complicated and Zhous character is forced to question her own ethics.
The show is highly topical, given the slowly building #MeToo movement in China. This is being fuelled by numerous instances of sexual discrimination, sexual assault and outright violence towards women, many instances of which have gone viral on Chinese social media before being deleted by censors.
Zhou Xun in Imperfect Victim. Courtesy of iQiyi. The first episode of Imperfect Victim, for instance, includes a section on the culture of heavy after-hours drinking with employers and clients and the pressures on junior staff to participate. This is a scenario which in the real world has led to multiple sexual misunderstandings and court cases where the woman was too inebriated to fend off unwanted approaches.
Largely presented from a female perspective, the show is directed by Yang Yang (A Dream of Splendor) from a screenplay by Ren Bao Ru and Gao Xuan. The supporting cast includes Chen Shu, Elaine Zhong and Angel Dong.
The show, which runs to 29 45-minute episodes, is credited as an iQiyi original and plays in China and some of the territories covered by the streamers international operations. These include Singapore and Thailand. Variety understands that the show is simultaneously available in China on BTV and Dragon TV.
iQiyi said that it uploaded the first four episodes from Monday, to encourage binge viewing. Thereafter, it will release two additional episodes per day in the early evening.