TV by the book

Dressed in a tuxedo, actor Zhao Lixin, with his signature black curly hair, steps onto a stage on the set of the popular TV show, The Wonderful Read, in Shunyi district, Beijing.

"I'm a budding writer trying to blend in with the elite society of London," he says loudly. Zhao plays the first-person narrator in the show's first episode, which recounts the tale of English writer W. Somerset Maugham's classic novel, The Moon and Sixpence.

The Wonderful Read artfully weaves together a stage play with analyses and discussions by a panel of experts and intellectuals to help audiences "read" 12 influential books.

Each of the series' 12 episodes is the adaptation of one of those books and, since it debuted on Jiangsu Satellite TV and the streaming site Tencent Video on Oct 8, the first season has achieved a rating of 9.3 points out of 10 on Douban.com, China's most popular review site.

According to chief director Guan Zhengwen, the show aims to provide audiences with fresh knowledge and activate their independent thinking.

"Purchasing a new book can be like buying a new outfit," Guan says. "We want our program to act like a fitting room, but for books where the audience can try different stories and writers before deciding what interests them the most."

Aside from The Moon and Sixpence, other books to get the TV show's unique treatment include 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline by historian Ray Huang; Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Israeli Yuval Noah Harari; 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff and the Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novel, The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin.

Zhao, who will also star in the episode featuring The Three-Body Problem, cites The Moon and Sixpence as one of his favorite books.