Since the beginning of 2025, suspense criminal investigation dramas have occupied a strong market position from quantity to quality. Yu Hewei, Chen Minghao, Duan Yihong, Guo Jingfei and other acting "criminal police captains" have finished singing. In this craze, Sun Li came with "Above the Clouds" as a female detective. From the "female perspective", it not only filled the film and television gap of women's unique value in criminal investigation work, but also opened up new possibilities for suspense expression.

  22 years ago, Sun Li, who was not a professional, debuted with "Jade Guanyin", playing the role of "Anxin" how a girl who was ignorant of the world grew up to a firm anti-drug policeman. The youthfulness and confusion required by the role "coined" with Sun Li, who had just entered the film and television industry at that time. 22 years later, Sun Li chose the criminal police "Han Qing" to return. What the audience saw was a national actress who used years of self-discipline to get close to the ability and agility of the female criminal police; at the same time, her increasingly mature acting skills and performance experience were able to interpret from a richer dimension how a mature female criminal police always had the courage to choose to move forward in a case mixed with emotional mystery. The kind of "Han Qing" facing difficulties, striving for selflessness, and resoluteness, seems to have the shadow of "safety" that has experienced vicissitudes and returned from maturity. The roles echo each other, first winning the audience's favorable points for "Above the Cloud".

  Sun Li's market appeal and expression are beyond doubt. The success of "Above the Cloud" depends on the content expression and the actor's two-way journey. Among the suspense dramas with men as the core of narrative, the most unique feature of "Above the Clouds" is that it opens up a new perspective for female suspense narratives, which not only elevates female characters to the hard core main line of criminal investigation, but more importantly, realizes a real female narrative. In addition to showing the state of "Han Qing" at work, the whole play also shows her emotional gains and losses in a large way: when "Han Qing" faces her partner "Zhong Wei" disappears for nearly two months without any news, she will experience emotional collapse and pain due to her strong obsession, and will be drunk when facing her master after get off work; under the protection of the inhumane shell, "Han Qing" has a deep emotional bond with her partner, master, and sister; the more she is, the more fragile and soft she is when she faces emotional tear... These intentional "showing weakness" have established a living, real and credible female detective image. The delicate and trivial emotional expression is not only not redundant or abrupt in the serious plot, but instead brings intensive emotional experience to the audience while solving the case, and thus creates deeper human thinking.

  Corresponding to the high emotional concentration of characters, "Above the Clouds" depicts the investigation process in "Above the Clouds" in a documentary style. The investigation site, collecting evidence, analyzing clues, connecting logic, etc., combine criminal investigation reasoning and psychological analysis. When watching the drama, there is a documentary tone of visiting the criminal investigation site in person, and it is also accompanied by a sense of game of exploring layers of progressive exploration. At the same time, in terms of case design and narrative trajectory of case solving, the drama does not aim to find the mastermind behind the scenes, but instead connects the fate of different characters through several unsolved cases, and finally restores a confusing "crime network". The plot starts from Bai Xiaohui's case, allowing the audience to "watch" the murderer committing the crime. Every time Han Qing's investigation progress is achieved, he gets one of the "puzzles". This new narrative perspective presents the game between characters, complex human nature, and personal stories more clearly.

  When flying in bad weather, people mostly have this experience: once the plane breaks through the dark clouds, there is a dazzling clear sky in front of them. As the title of the play tells, the people's police's pursuit of justice is just like believing that there is light above the dark clouds, and film and television creation also requires the courage to persist in innovation and exploration in the fog of the market. This belief will eventually guide the direction of "breaking darkness".

  Text/Reporter Yang Wenjie of this newspaper

[Editor in charge: Susan]