Most historic dramas focus on the power struggle, succession to the throne and wars between the neighbouring countries. Those subjects are fascinating and creating captivating dramas that tell those stories seems easy.
This series is absolutely unique! It focuses on an engineering projects - dam construction on the Yellow River. The subject sounds totally boring and I only started to watch this drama because of the beautiful cinematography - I did not expect to be invested. I was so wrong! It turns out that when you are a good story teller, you can take any subject and turn it into gold. Our characters fighting against the river, which poses detrimental threat to the people, turn out not only to be nerdy engineers, but also valiant heroes.
The level of attention to the detail is out of this world and if you watch closely, you can learn a lot about how people managed to do everyday work. Acting is top notch. Music is simply beautiful.
Trigger warning: the subject of war with Taiwan is also important in this drama, which is quite unpleasant, but an obvious censorship requirement, I suppose?