The series' director-creator is Wong Kar Wai. This makes "Blossoms" a big deal three times over. Wong, 67, is one of the great living filmmakers -- just ask anyone who's seen "Chungking Express" 1994), "2046'' (2004), or, above all, "In the Mood for Love" (2000) -- and this is his television debut. But he hasn't been a working filmmaker for a decade. His most recent film, "The Grandmaster," came out in 2013.

"Blossoms," which is set in the frenzied financial climate of early-'90s Shanghai, is very much a return to form -- perhaps too much so. Lavishly (slavishly?) beautiful, it's a stylistic tour de force: swoony, prowling camerawork; showy camera angles; splashy, luscious colors and textures; dropped-out sound; zip-zip editing; irruptions of slow motion. It's a thin line between hey-look-at-this beauty and hey-look-at-me-doing-this beauty. So be it. Wong's artistry long ago earned the right to ignore that line as he sees fit.

Fortunately, Uncle Ye's tartness works to keep directorial self-indulgence in check. In doing so, he helps out viewers almost as much as he helps out Mr. Bao. No fancy stuff from him! With his bald head and glasses, he looks like a bespectacled billiard ball in a Mao suit. His voice equal parts rasp and bark, Ye's like a drill sergeant with an MBA. "I'm here to solve problems," he says to Mr. Bao in episode 9. Truer television words were never spoken.

Think of Uncle Ye as being a little bit like Hesh Rabkin (Jerry Adler), on "The Sopranos": an elderly, worldly, unillusioned man whom the hero respects and whose counsel he relies on.

Of course it was "The Sopranos" that gave us the most famous uncle in television history, Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese). The title wasn't an honorific. Junior really was Tony Soprano's uncle, though his relationship with the series hero is a whole lot more, let us say, complicated than Uncle Ye's with Mr. Bao.

Junior isn't the only prominent uncle in TV history. On "The Beverly Hillbillies," Jethro had his Uncle Jed (Buddy Ebsen). Various iterations of the Addams Family have included Uncle Fester, most recently on "Wednesday," with Fred Armisen in the role. In an avuncular category of its own is "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.," which ran on NBC from 1964-68.

O come, all Ye faithful - The Boston Globe