Game show alliances and missing suitcase shenanigans aside, it looks like EXO’s Lay Zhang Yixing will be sharing the spotlight once again with his Go Fighting! big brother Sun Honglei as the pair have just been officially announced to star together with Liu Yijun in the new police drama Crime Crackdown 扫黑风暴.
As the English title says, the story is set against the backdrop of the nationwide police campaign to rid cities of criminal gangs and syndicates; and there are even reports that police consultants have actually been engaged to advise the drama’s production team. In any case, Sun Honglei will play the drama’s main protagonist Li Chengyang, with Lay Zhang appearing as the character of Lin Hao and Liu Yijun as He Yong in the story about a frontline officer unjustly framed for a crime he didn’t commit to keep him from unveiling the truth.
It just occurred to me to ask if anyone has noticed how it’s slowly becoming the thing now for popular young actors to try their hand at some sort of crime or military themed dramas lately? To name a few that’s on my mind right now, there’s Wang Yibo and his police drama Being a Hero 冰雨火, Yang Yang’s military drama Glory of the Special Forces 特战荣耀, Johnny Huang Jingyu‘s hit police procedural The Thunder 破冰行动 or Li Yifeng and Chen Xingxu‘s The Glory of Youth 号手就位 No? Yes? It’s just a thought anyway but if this is going to become a trend, it’s great to see the younger generation branching out into other genres and having fun trying different roles isn’t it?
Meanwhile, Wu Yue, Wang Zhifei, Liu Zhibing and Wu Xiaoliang are also featured in the police drama series with special appearances by Maggie Jiang Shuying also confirmed.
Source: 1
Lil
Agreed! Also, I felt with the raise of BL novel adaptation, many productions are geared towards nonromance centric and moving forward friendship path instead. Right now we may see a handful of pure romance center dramas as they are already done filming, but given the # of in production towards Male on Male leads and Female on Female lead centric, we will start to see more diverse type of dramas.
I really like it that Lay is doing more of projects that’s not romance centric.