Later I Laughed: A Review

Later I Laughed is a leisurely slice of life set in Shanghai, and it opens with a heroine who will make you want to shake her.

Wu Xiu Ya is a people-pleaser, a doormat, the one who absorbs everyone else’s needs and swallows her own. You want to scream at the screen for her to push back. Then the show takes you into her past and shows you how she became this, and the urge softens into something closer to recognition.

The storytelling is offbeat. An omniscient narrator runs through the whole series, telling you what a scene might otherwise have shown. By every rule that should fail. Here it works.

Some episodes cut too close. The patriarchy and the misogyny felt familiar enough to sting.

Xiu Ya quits her job. She chases the dream she buried. Men line up for her heart and she walks past them, and the story ends without tying her to any of it. Refreshing, in a season crowded with romances and historicals. The acting is superb, the writing real. My only loss was the language. I wished I understood Mandarin so I could actually get the jokes. The subtitles didn’t do justice.

If this moved you, send a tip.