It doesn't take much exposure to Chinese television to realize CCTV's recipe for juicing the ratings of any show: adding mandarin-speaking foreigners. And while we're always happy to see our compatriots getting paid by the Chinese government for a change, we'll be the first to admit that the mandarin fluency of many of our aspiring Western thespians leaves a considerable amount to be desired, at least in terms of communicating more subtle details as character motivations, emotional sincerity and overarching plot.

Learning Chinese? In this podcast, join our crew as we walk through the climactic scene from a recent CCTV production featuring everyone's favorite mandarin-speaking Scots detective... as heard by its Chinese audience. And once we're finished with that, keep listening as we offer up a quick cheater's guide to a Chinese genre that's equally impenetrable to the rest of the world. Soon you too can impress your friends with eerie foreknowledge about the plots of Chinese television shows you've never seen before and are unlikely to ever see again.