White Dragon

What makes “White Dragon” a (much) better than average thriller is not the particulars of its plot, but the excellence of its execution. Eben Bolter’s camera vividly translates the extraordinary look of Hong Kong, playing itself, while sets feel authentically inhabited over time, not freshly dressed for the camera. Universally intelligent performances make even minor characters interesting and hard to pin down even as they are being employed by the writers to well defined, practical ends.

[The city of Hong Kong and John Simm] ensure that this eight-episode series filled with heavy-breathing conspirators, multiplying menaces and other reliable indicators of ordinariness instead builds to a sizzling life.

Simm is very much the thinking man here, an academic thriving on his wits. Leung is affecting as a young woman whose quest rocks the core of her identity and her own chance for love. ... The miniseries almost sticks its landing. Its final scene can’t resist a bit of mawkish sentimentality to wrap the story. It’s not earned or needed.

White Dragon is no “Chinatown.” But it has its merits: the minor but distinct pleasures of location filming in Hong Kong, and the more serious attraction of compelling casting.