General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Black White Forest (黑白森林)

Black White Forest (黑白森林) is a 2024 Chinese suspense and crime-investigation web series in which a young detective searches for his stolen service pistol and, in doing so, uncovers a twelve-year-old case and the forces behind it. It was produced by Tencent Video, directed and written by Zhao Junkai, and stars Ding Yuxi, Ning Li, and Han Xue.¹

Key fact	Detail
Format	28 episodes, suspense/crime-investigation web drama, mainland China, 2024²
Run	Premiered December 4, 2024 at 18:00 on Tencent Video; final episode December 15, 2024; daily release, about 43 minutes per episode¹^•³
Lead cast	Ding Yuxi as detective Wen Binbin, Ning Li as squad leader Xing Liang, Han Xue as Wen Zixuan⁴
Creative team	Zhao Junkai as director and chief screenwriter, Hou Jie as co-director, Ji Daoqing and Wang Peng as chief producers¹
Series position	Third installment of Zhao Junkai's "Black & White" series, after Black & White Zone, Black & White Code, and Black & White Rule⁵
Platform performance	Tencent Video heat value passed 22153 by December 21, 2024, topping several platform and third-party popularity rankings⁶
Ratings	Douban 6.1/10 from 18,428 raters and Tencent Video 9.1/10 from about 493,000 raters, both as of February 8, 2025⁶

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The story begins when young criminal police officer Wen Binbin (Ding Yuxi) loses his service pistol during a task, is suspended, and sets out to recover it with the help of squad leader Xing Liang (Ning Li), who is both his superior and his brother-in-law. The lost gun connects to a murder investigation and to a case from twelve years earlier, and the trail leads to a mastermind who has been manipulating events from behind the scenes.⁴^•⁵

Han Xue plays Wen Zixuan, Wen Binbin's sister and Xing Liang's wife, and Su Xiaotong plays Na Fan. Supporting and guest roles include Sun Xun as the local figure Bao Ge, Xu Honghao as the volatile villain Dian Lao'er, plus Xiahou Bin, Fei Liqi, Yang Chuanbei, Fu Chengpeng, Cheng Yu, Du Yuan, Li Naiwen, Li Qiang, and Zhao Xun.¹^•⁷

Production and the "Black & White" series

The drama is the third entry in director Zhao Junkai's "Black & White" (黑白) series, following Black & White Zone, Black & White Code, and Black & White Rule. Zhao, whose earlier credits include Case 6 Group and Drawing Sword, has described the series' guiding idea as a "Black & White universe": placing police and criminals as two poles in a crime world built on crime events with distinctly mainland Chinese characteristics, where differing criminal forms and criminal types offer a wide range of storytelling material.⁵^•⁸

In an interview with The Paper, Zhao said that in his research he had not encountered "born criminals" among the people he met; most, he said, drifted into crime to make a living, an observation he drew on for the show's portrayal of motive. He also argued that the evolution of crime-drama storytelling is driven by policy and market demand rather than by creators' preferences alone, and that crime in the era of big data is changing in ways the genre must follow.⁸

Where the preceding Black & White Rule had been noted for a return to traditional detective-drama form, Black & White Forest took a different direction described by the trade outlet GuDuo as "neighborhood suspense": the investigation unfolds through food stalls, auction houses, and everyday street life, with the writers' stated principle of "suspense as the shell, emotion as the core."⁷

Release and performance

Tencent Video released the series exclusively from December 4, 2024, with four episodes on the first day, then a staggered schedule through mid-December; the final three episodes arrived on December 15, 2024.¹^•⁶^•³ Before launch, reservations on the platform exceeded one million, and on premiere day the show reached first place on Tencent Video's popularity, trending, and suspense-drama charts.⁷

By December 21, 2024, the show's Tencent heat value had passed 22153, and it had repeatedly topped Tencent's internal rankings as well as Maoyan's real-time all-network heat chart, Yunhe's all-network buzz chart, and Douban's real-time popular TV list.⁶ In the Lighthouse all-platform weekly chart for the week ending December 22, 2024, it ranked seventh with 0.4 hundred million views and a 2.87% market share as a Tencent exclusive.⁹ A Douban group post on December 29, 2024 reported that its effective views across the web had exceeded 200 million.¹⁰

Reception

Audience scores diverged sharply by platform: 6.1/10 on Douban from 18,428 raters against 9.1/10 on Tencent Video from about 493,000 raters, both measured on February 8, 2025.⁶

Critical commentary was split along similar lines. China Youth Daily praised the series for showing the hardship behind the police detective's profession and for depicting the police spirit at the intersection of human nature and the law, noting that the lost-gun opening draws in commercial rivalry, financial fraud, and the twelve-year-old cold case.⁶ The Paper was critical, judging that the show aimed for the route of The Knockout but stumbled in execution, with muddled pacing, an unclear main perspective that switched between police and underworld threads, and characterizations that did not hold together.⁶ Lianhe Zaobao credited Ding Yuxi's performance in his first crime drama while faulting a plot that leaned too heavily on the protagonist's plot armor.⁵ Reviewers also observed that the wave of similar black-and-white moral-gamble plots puts a director's narrative control to the test, since many suspense dramas start well and fade at the end.¹¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › East Asian web and streaming serials › Titles symbols to Co

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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