The Apothecary Diaries Review

Maomao is the reason to watch. A cynical, curious, poison obsessed young woman kidnapped into palace service, she treats the intrigues of the court as puzzles and the powerful people around her as slightly dim patients, and the show lets her be genuinely clever rather than merely told she is. The mysteries are small scale and satisfying, built on real pharmacology and court custom, and they accumulate into a larger picture of the palace's politics.

The relationship with the eunuch Jinshi is a slow, prickly, funny courtship that the series has the patience not to rush. The production is handsome, with costume and architecture drawn in detail, and the direction favours faces and silences. The pacing is gentle to a fault in the first season's middle, and the wider court plot is easier to admire than to follow. It is a period drama built around one of the best protagonists in recent anime.