Good Night: The Funeral-Home Workplace Comedy with Guo Qilin and Zhang Xueying

Why this one

A workplace comedy set among the dead sounds like a dare. Good Night (此处通往繁星, Ci Chu Tong Wang Fan Xing, literally "This Place Leads to the Stars") takes it anyway. It premiered on October 9 on Youku and Mango TV at noon China time, and it follows a young man who goes home after a failed stint in Beijing and takes a job at a funeral home. He treats it as a stopgap and does not expect to stay.

The show's pitch is its balance. China News (中新网), reporting on the premiere, says the series does not play up the fear of death. It puts its weight on colleagues who look after one another and on a trade that sends people off with dignity. If you want a drama that is funny in the break room and quiet at the bedside, this is a short one to try: ten episodes in all.

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It is still airing. According to Youku's schedule as relayed by viewing calendars, the finale is due on October 17 for paying members and a day later for others, so this guide covers the setup and the early episodes and leaves the ending alone. Check the platform for the final dates.

The setup

Wang Can (王灿), played by Guo Qilin (郭麒麟), is a "second-generation funeral worker", bin er dai (殡二代), the child of a family already in the trade. He went to Beijing and worked as a bartender, and China News says he came home after a friend's sudden misfortune. He is placed on the embalming team (装殓班, zhuanglian ban) at Qingliangshan Funeral Home (清凉山殡仪馆), the unit that washes, dresses and prepares the deceased before a farewell ceremony.

There he meets three childhood friends who now work with him: Chen Hexu (陈和煦), Song Tianshuang (宋天爽) and Mao Erzhe (毛尔哲). Under a team leader, Cao Yongji (曹永吉), and Su Dandan (苏丹丹), known as Dan jie (丹姐, "Sister Dan"), the team handles one farewell after another. Wang Can's first assignment is cleaning the toilets. The title comes from a Latin motto, which the screenwriter Bao Jingjing (鲍鲸鲸) renders in Chinese as "through hardship, to the stars." She told China News that the idea is to learn to face death and also to ease up on living.

The first episodes alternate between workplace skits and moments of real weight. A fresh recruit's night shift turns into a ghost scare with a quiet explanation. Another early assignment takes him to a hospital to wash and dress a young patient who is close to death, his first time so near to a farewell. The show handles these scenes plainly. The comedy sits in the gaps between them, never over the bodies.

Cast and crew

• Guo Qilin (郭麒麟) as Wang Can, the returning "second-generation" worker

• Zhang Xueying (张雪迎) as Chen Hexu, a childhood friend and embalming technician

• Wang Ou (王鸥), in a special appearance, as Su Dandan, known as Dan jie

• Yin Wenxuan (尹文萱) as Song Tianshuang

• Zheng Wei (郑伟) as Mao Erzhe

• Pei Kuishan (裴魁山) as Cao Yongji, the team leader

• Jiang Qilin (江奇霖) as Li Sa

The director is Shi Yue (史岳), known for the Medical Examiner Dr. Qin (法医秦明) series, according to Marie Claire Taiwan. The screenwriter is Bao Jingjing, who also wrote the 2011 film Love Is Not Blind (失恋33天). China News describes the story as original, not an adaptation. It reports that the creators spent five years researching across five cities, and that the writers spent time with funeral-home staff to learn their daily work, from body preparation to local funeral customs and home visits.

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The leads: a comedian's son, a calm technician

Guo Qilin's name carries a comic pedigree: he grew up in a crosstalk (相声, xiangsheng) family, and Marie Claire Taiwan notes that he uses that instinct for timing here. Wang Can is the group's mood-maker, a talker who is nervous in his first weeks and then slowly grows into the work. Viewers who know him from the Yunnan border crime drama Borderland Blues (边水往事) will notice that he reunites here with Jiang Qilin from that show. They tease each other on Weibo about the bar and about brotherhood.

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Zhang Xueying's Chen Hexu is the counterweight. The character is an embalming and restoration technician, composed and thorough, who keeps her tenderness for the dead. Marie Claire Taiwan reports that Zhang learned the procedures before filming, from dressing a body to reshaping features and stitching wounds. Chen Hexu is the colleague whose calm shows Wang Can what the job demands. The pairing works on contrast: one lead jokes, the other holds still.

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Wang Ou joins as a special guest in the billing. China News describes Su Dandan as strict with the living and meticulous with the dead. In the first episode she bursts into the budget meeting with a smoking bundle of mugwort and sets off the sprinklers.

How a comedy handles death

The humor is aimed at the workplace, not at the dead. According to Marie Claire Taiwan, the jokes come from the trade itself: rumors about high pay set against paper offerings shaped like designer bags, workplace ghost stories handed down to newcomers, and a running joke that the cremation team has the warmer job.

The show also uses silence. In a later episode that viewing guides summarize, Wang Can and Chen Hexu find a flashlight inside a cold-storage drawer. A bereaved daughter put it there, they learn, so that her parents could see their way. A scene like that works because the series trusts the object and does not explain it.

The series is also aware that the trade is changing. In that same stretch of episodes, a machine for "three-minute self-service flower arranging" arrives at the funeral home and takes the work away from the staff who used to do it by hand. It is a small workplace story about automation, set in a place where the human touch is the point.

What to know before watching

A Chinese funeral home, binyiguan (殡仪馆), splits its work between units, among them the embalming team this show follows and the cremation team (火化班) that the characters tease. Because the drama is about dying, it includes a young patient's last hours and the preparation of the dead. The tone stays gentle, but the subject is not hidden.

At ten episodes, the show is short by Chinese-drama standards. Its structure is closer to a run of small episodes about one workplace than to a long serial, which makes it easy to sample.

Where to watch

Good Night streams on Youku and Mango TV, which premiered it together in China. Overseas availability varies by region and subtitle language, so check Youku's and Mango TV's international apps in your country. Good Night is the English title used by TMDB and TVmaze.