iQIYI Confirms August Launch Dates for “Checkmate” and “Love Between Fairy and Devil”

iQIYI has confirmed August launch dates for two projected summer blockbusters (one of which I am extremely excited about). Checkmate and Love Between Fairy and Devil will both premiere on the streaming service within the week.

First up is iQIYI’s latest romance drama Love Between Fairy and Devil (苍兰诀), which will debut this Sunday, August 7 – the first of 36 45-minute episodes. This love story between mortal enemies will stream in Mandarin with English subtitles to audiences in 191 territories. It’s part of iQIYI’s “Sweet On” series, focusing on romantic dramas. 

The show has released two song teasers to get everyone excited for the show. ‘Lapse in Memory of You (失忆)’ is a single from the soundtrack for the drama, performed by female lead Esther Yu. The other is ‘Parting Love (诀爱)’, sung by Faye Zhan (詹雯婷), better known as the former lead singer of renowned band F.I.R.. Both videos feature gorgeous art for the series.

Love Between Fairy and Devil (苍兰诀) features Dylan Wang (王鹤棣) as the evil Demon Prince Dongfang Qingcang, who eradicates the fairy race. 10,000 years later, one of the holy fairies is reincarnated as the lowly fairy Xiao Lan Hua, who is played by Esther Yu (虞书欣). Xiao Lan Hua accidentally frees the imprisoned Dongfang Qingcang, who now wants to sacrifice the young fairy to remove the seal on himself and truly be free. In the process, the two get to know each other better, and the ruthless demon finds himself falling in love with the gentle and adorable fairy.

Next up is Checkmate (民国大侦探), the first Chinese-language adaptation of Agatha Christie’s works. It will debut on August 10, the first of 24 45-minute episodes, and stream in Mandarin with English subtitles. It stars Hu Yitian as an interpretation of Christie’s famed detective Hercule Poirot.

I am super excited about this show and have been ever since I watched My Roommate Is a Detective, a 2020 drama also starring Hu Yitian and Zhang Yunlong. Actually, I had meant to write up a recommendation post for it, but I never got around to it. I settled by recommending it on one of our recent webcasts.

When I first heard about Checkmate, it was implied to be a sequel of sorts to My Roommate Is a Detective. It clearly isn’t (even if it’s referred to that way on MyDramaList), but if it’s even half as entertaining as the “original” – or if the two leads maintain the same amazing chemistry they had in their other drama – I won’t care that it isn’t a true sequel.

Yan Situ (played by Hu Yitian) is an extremely perceptive young man who becomes a detective after losing his previous law firm job as he refuses to bow down to authority when they asked him to turn a blind eye to a murder case. He will be joined by Luo Shaochuan (portrayed by Zhang Yunlong), a wealthy sergeant who befriends Yan Situ during a murder case where the latter lost his job; and Zhou Mowan (portrayed by Zhang Xinyu), a teacher. The trio, together with others, meets through a series of coincidences and decides to form a detective team together to solve a series of cases. But what might look like disconnected cases might actually just be one piece of the final puzzle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxPIGeNXnpY

I absolutely cannot wait to check out Checkmate. (And you should all definitely check out My Roommate Is a Detective while you’re at it.)

iQIYI is home to a couple of my favorite C-dramas, Gank Your Heart and Luoyang, as well as my newest obsession, KinnPorsche. (I basically paid for a VIP subscription solely so I could watch Luoyang and then stuck around for everything else.) So I have a lot of faith in the quality of these two series.

Author: Jamie Sugah

Jamie has a BA in English with a focus in creative writing from The Ohio State University. She self-published her first novel, The Perils of Long Hair on a Windy Day, which is available through Amazon. She is currently an archivist and lives in New York City with her demon ninja vampire cat. She covers television, books, movies, anime, and conventions in the NYC area.

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