Sometimes there’s very consistent tone — Mobius is a good example of tight and consistent tone.
But many in other cases there can be jarring juxtapositions in tone.
Shows that start out as slapstick or Lucille Ball type comedies may become very dark and serious in the third quarter.
Sometimes a comedy is defined only by the protagonists not dying in the end and a ‘happily ever after outcome.’ More in the vein of an Ancient Greek definition of comedy.
And more like Shakespeare’s theatre, there can be moments of outright comic relief in the midst of 40 episode nonstop tragedy.
Then, there are the comic non sequitur comments — especially about food preferences— in the middle of fight scenes that originated in Hong Kong action movies (Per Aspera Ad Astra references those).
As I noted to someone else, Mobius is a current day timey-wimey scifi action thriller available on Netflix. I thought it was very well done.
It’s about a police detective sergeant who possesses the ability to relive some (unpredictably random) days and uses it in solving crimes.
It takes place in Macau, so there’s some Cantonese and English mixed in with the Mandarin although the lead actor Bai Jingting is ethnically Manchu and from Beijing.
Bai Jingting has done quite a few scifi dramas recently. Another timey-wimey one Reset takes place mainly in the Chinese Republican era — with all the angsty spy-stuff and factional twists of that era — and was also on Netflix. (It’s no longer available in Canada but may still be on in the USA.)