General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

We Are All Alone (怪你过分美丽)

We Are All Alone (怪你过分美丽, also romanized Guai Ni Guo Fen Mei Li) is a 2020 Chinese workplace drama about a talent agent in the entertainment industry, produced by iQIYI and streamed exclusively on that platform from June 8 to July 15, 2020 in 36 episodes.¹^•² Directed by Wang Zhi with Su Peng as chief screenwriter, it stars Qin Lan as the agent Mo Xiangwan and Godfrey Gao as the lawyer Mo Bei, and it was the last television drama Gao completed before his death.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Original title	怪你过分美丽 (Guai Ni Guo Fen Mei Li); English title We Are All Alone¹
Broadcast	iQIYI, June 8 to July 15, 2020; 36 episodes of about 42 minutes¹^•²
Source material	Adapted from Wei Zai's novel of the same name, serialized online in 2008; the screenplay changed roughly 70 percent of the original⁵
Lead cast	Qin Lan as Mo Xiangwan; Godfrey Gao as Mo Bei; Wang Ziyi, David Wang, Hui Yinghong, and Guo Xiaoting in supporting roles³^•⁶
Genre	Workplace drama with romance elements, set in the entertainment industry¹
Reception	Douban 7.7/10 from 65,802 raters (as of March 9, 2023); iQIYI 8.7/10; IMDb 8.4/10 from 54 ratings³^•⁷

Spoilers

Premise

Mo Xiangwan is the top agent, or "iron-willed agent," of the Qili company. At the Golden Urn awards ceremony, her two flagship artists are both nominated for major prizes, but behind the glamour her position is fragile: a strategic mistake costs her both clients, and she must rebuild her career.³^•⁸ Encountering veteran actors, she comes to value craft over traffic-driven celebrity and shifts toward developing substantive projects. Along the way she meets Mo Bei, a successful commercial lawyer.⁸

The opening episode establishes the character's working reality: when the popular young star Lin Xiang takes an overdose after a breakup, Mo Xiangwan confirms she is not in danger, directs staff on site to induce vomiting, and calls a doctor to the apartment, then lectures her assistant that an agent must rationally balance the interests of artists, the company, fans, media, production crews, and commercial clients.⁹ The drama's plotlines draw on recognizable industry phenomena, including public-relations comment control, contract disputes and poaching, billing-order fights between stars, script rewrites of purchased IP, inflated salaries, manufactured couples, and online harassment.¹⁰

Adaptation and production

The source novel was written in 2008, when the protagonist worked in television; by 2018 the entertainment industry had changed enough that the adapters rebuilt the professional setting while keeping the relationship between Mo Xiangwan and Mo Bei. The novel gave the two leads a child, a plotline the series dropped as it shifted weight from romance to industry.⁵ Chief producer and artistic director Liang Zhenhua, a professor at Beijing Normal University, has said the Korean workplace drama Misty inspired him to develop a female-led workplace drama of similar temperament.⁵ The series was produced by iQIYI with Perfect World Pictures and New Media Corporation, with Dai Ying, Wang Yixu, and Liang Zhenhua as chief producers.⁴

Godfrey Gao's final role

Mo Bei was played by the Taiwanese-Canadian actor Godfrey Gao. We Are All Alone finished filming on August 29, 2019; on November 27, 2019, Gao collapsed and died of cardiac arrest at age 35 while recording the Zhejiang Television variety show Chase Me.³ The first episode's final eight minutes carried a memorial tribute to him.³

Reception

The series premiered to a Douban score of 8.3 and stayed above 8 through its finale, a level the People's Daily-affiliated press described as rare for Chinese workplace dramas.⁹ During its run it reached Weibo's hot-search list 44 times, three times at number one, and related topics accumulated more than 13.7 billion reads; Qin Lan's own Weibo account gained nearly one million followers.¹¹ It topped the Maoyan, Guduo, and Baidu drama heat rankings and reached fourth on Douban's Chinese-language word-of-mouth chart.¹¹

Critics singled out its refusal to soften the industry. The Wenhui Daily praised its calm reflection on the idol industry, fan economy, and IP commerce, and its precise handling of topics such as "traffic" and "fandom."³ Reviewers also noted that Mo Xiangwan, unlike many recent urban heroines, solves her problems without a protective male lead rescuing her; neither her boss Yu Jiang nor Mo Bei removes her difficulties, and both add to them.¹² Negative assessments held that the drama's exposure of the industry's deeper problems stayed superficial, and that the later episodes, weighted down by subplots about Mo Xiangwan's father and brother, became scattered and rushed to a conclusion.³

The finale drew particular discussion: the star Lin Xiang dies by suicide after her ex-boyfriend Luo Feng's new relationship is exposed, and Luo Feng, played by Wang Zirui, is pushed into a public apology under the weight of public opinion.¹³ The drama's marketing was also noted for its immersive campaigns, including a pre-broadcast screening event for more than 100 industry insiders, a pop-up "agent crash course," a "one-day agent" experience with the magazine GQ China and Weibo, and a music blind-box collaboration with NetEase Cloud Music.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 › Chinese modern and contemporary drama › Premiered 1998 to 2023

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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