The sexually repressed widow Doan comes to play tennis in the court where sly, lewd orphan Xuan (nicknamed Red-haired Xuan for his sunburnt hair) is working as a ball boy. Their encounter that day would change Xuan’s life forever, as the widow introduced him to an entirely different world of the hypocritical and decadent petite bourgeoisie class, a condition of “Westernized” middle-class Hanoians under French colonial rule in the 1920s. An 8-part series adapted from Vu Trong Phung’s classic satire.

Thang is a Hanoi intellectual and graduates from university with high distinction causing his former teacher, Dao, to invite him to work in a mathematics institute of odd algorithms. He has problems because of his personality and refuses to give up his mathematical perspectives. He distinguishes himself as a person of integrity, which also causes problems for him.