The Bad Kids

It is the summer of 2005 in Ningzhou, a fictional coastal town. Zhu Chaoyang (朱朝阳, played by Rong Zishan), a top student with no friends and little attention from his divorced parents, is visited by Yan Liang (严良, Shi Pengyuan), an old acquaintance, who arrives with a young girl called Pupu (普普, Wang Shengdi) after the two ran away from a welfare home. The three become friends.

On a trip to a mountain scenic area, they are taking pictures when they accidentally record a substitute teacher, Zhang Dongsheng (张东升, Qin Hao), pushing his parents-in-law off a cliff. What they do with that footage, and what he does once he learns of it, sets the story in motion. A veteran police officer close to retirement, Chen Guansheng (陈冠声, Wang Jingchun), is also on the children's trail.

The 2005 setting and the coastal town give the series a particular feel, with the children's summer holiday as its frame. The series is adapted from Zijin Chen's (紫金陈) 2014 novel Huai Xiaohai (坏小孩, "bad kid"), and was the second title in iQIYI's "Mist Theater" (迷雾剧场), iQIYI's line of short suspense series. It was directed by Xin Shuang (辛爽). Filming ran about 75 days between June and September 2019, mostly in Zhanjiang, Guangdong. The team spent six months casting and chose the three young leads from more than 2,000 children.

Its reception was large. By June 23, 2020, the series had drawn 1.12 billion topic views on Weibo. A line from Zhang Dongsheng, "Wanna go for a hike?" (一起爬山吗), became a widely used meme. Variety ranked it second on its list of the 15 best international series of 2020. At the Asia Contents Awards in Busan it won Best Creative, and Rong Zishan won Best New Actor. A short 2021 special, The Bad Kids: Echo (隐秘的角落·回响), brought back several of the cast, but the main series stands on its own.