2024 Thai Drama Challenge

Quietly, gently, heartbreakingly beautiful.

A masterpiece of economic story-telling. Rich enough to easily have been a full length film, but the acting and directing are strong enough and skilled enough to tell it through a few words here, a look there, and together that makes for a very powerful work.

It's 31 minutes. Just watch it, cannot recommend it highly enough.

Lovely wee series about friends helping friends with care and respect.

used for Thai traditional food challenge

Part of a Thai PBS series of two-part stories which aims to give voices to those not often heard. This one is from the director of Sweet Sensory.

Short film on bullying and violence in school, lesbian lead

Various things misled me into low expectations for the plot despite it having so many of my very favourite actors/actresses. It's both outrageous and outrageously good.

If you like Thai youth series and/or any of the cast, give it a go. Recommend it highly.

Deserved classic of a genre that's barely old enough to have classics :) Good intro to Thai and/or BL.

the 2nd straightest BL i've seen.

can't really count this as horror for the challenge. maybe count it for traditional music at the beginning? it's like they ticked some boxes to chase algorithms for views.

Editing, camera work and sound are at times as awkward and unpolished as the teenage boys at its heart, but these characters are ones I care so much about. I didn't expect to love it as much as I do. Perhaps better regarded as gay coming of age than BL.

adapted from a novel

supernatural-ish, adapted (there's a Japanese adaptation too but that's later)

maybe for friendship?

Goofy, clever, funny, warm and kind. Thai humour and youth comedy at its generous, open-hearted best.

used in challenge for actor  Punpun Sutatta

a lakorn's worth of emotions in two hours. i'm not sure how i feel about it all, will take some time to digest

remake of Korean film

now i remember why i don't do het rom coms

adaptation of Chinese novel; first love

difficult subject matter, gently, beautifully told

can't recommend this highly enough, Thai PBS

a strange wee story about loss, grief and love, wrapped up in a very fluffy chick lit BL and comedy at the expense of most (aside from the mums) of its women characters.

more depth than the packaging would suggest and that carried it through.

Slick US production felt strange alongside very familiar Thai humour.  A world where women are in charge but are still competing, not just for men, but men turned into celebrities for the sake of advertising. Good message about resistance.

DUEAN DUEAN DUEAN :)

short film, friendship, 3 high school girls, adapted from a song

Sweet, gentle, easy to watch as 4 half hour episodes rather than a 2 hour movie. Loved how truly women-centered it is.

Mini-lakorn with a gay romance. Maybe it was too short to absorb all the melodrama but I found some of this too upsetting. Less might have been more on that score. Didn't help that it reminded me so much of values I sought after in my own life, like community, love and real purpose. The setting is beautiful. I know I could never cope with Bangkok but maybe in another life I'll get to see Chiang Mai and the area around it.

Another from Nattawut Poonpiriya who made the quietly beautiful short film The Library. Here he turns a real life high school cheating scandal into an edge of your seat how is this going to end thriller that touches on morals, class and privilege without preaching.

Crammed full with every type of relationship and relationship problem, the density of pain was difficult through much of it. They pulled it off though, and without resorting to forgiveness that glosses over the pain to find their happy endings.

As important as meeting both partners' needs was to several of the story lines, I wish they hadn't fallen back on quick bangs as their examples for vanilla het sex.

For all that international fans will wander in for the gay romance, this is family politics lakorn whose plot is carried by strong women characters and brotherly love. The pacing and melodrama worked well for me, I found it exciting without being overly stressful.

Short two part, 'Space' comes first, 'Begin' is 2nd. Gentle, heartfelt, loyalty and young love. Very well done, from a crowd funded group.

4th full rewatch - thank you Carm :) - and this is back to the top (almost) of my list. Yes, there are things you can kvetch aboot but it's an emotional masterpiece, especially in its use of music, setting and lighting to cradle the characters', and ours if we let it in, pain. It is beautiful.

Another Thai coming of age movie with such a warm and generous heart.

The hazing may have been "exaggerated for entertainment purposes" but that ended up making it the romanticization of cycles of bullying, especially with the excuses made for it and the return to it in the last episode. It started to win me over when they let up on that and focused on what seemed to be the difficulties of being a closeted gay man, except they're only gay for each other. Singto and Krist handled the complex emotions of those middle episodes very well and the series could have been so much more if it had played to those strengths.

Good women characters and on the pain of unrequited love in general, although the het versions were forgotten about once they'd served their purpose.

The beginning is uneven. A 40 year old actor plays a 1st year uni student in flashbacks... it skips around so it's not clear if it's a bit of a ghost story or what's really going on. There's a brief touch of travelog for the Dan Sai district (Loei province, NE Thailand) and education about one of its customs. But as it progresses, it becomes a moving short story about forgiveness.

Well worth two hours.  (used for traditional costumes in the challenge)

Being generous, it's like they crammed the court intrigue parts of a Chinese historical drama into a 2 hour movie. I haven't seen a recent production which was so obviously filmed pretty much entirely on a set but otherwise it was pretty. All about the boys with a couple of token nods towards women's plights.

(For challenge, traditional dance, drums. Historic clothes, dance costumes. Some certainly Chinese not Thai)

When a 4 episode series takes me a week to finish because I want to hold onto it.... Will be going back to spend time with them again.

The emotions aren't big and dramatic, they're just very real.

(Challenge - filmed abroad)

Watched this from recommendation thread & because so many comments overwhelmingly positive. Inferior as a time loop, inferior as a medical/crime drama, inferior as melodrama, ok enough as BL for the short bits it was there but hardly anything special. High stress, most of it pointless because of the time loop, and the low pay off was stretched far too thin.

Joined the recommendation thread hoping to find some community, however small. It just pointed me to a crowded series page of people I'll never fit in with. Things I like are being made, there must be more than the one person I've found. But maybe not amongst people whose language I speak.

Thin and vapid. They lost pretty much everything that worked in the Japanese version. Even the core lessons that those who look like they have everything have their own insecurities and seeing one's own value were diluted and caked in sugar coating. Or maybe the J-version was just as cliched and I didn't realise it. Sort of scared to watch it again after this.

One positive, Junior Panachai has skill with comedy and probably overall versatility. Would like to see his work with better writing and directing.

Set in southern Thailand, with much about their local weaving. I was in the wrong head space for the love that couldn't happen story line but happy to learn more about the area and craft.

(used for Arts in the challenge, although they may have had fine arts in mind rather than traditional)

13 minute short, beautiful for what it is

There's a raw vibrancy to this that shines through, especially as it explores emotions and vulnerability in the second half.

2018, set the bar high and perhaps it's been exceeded by a few that followed, but well deserves its reputation. A few less characters would have let it be a bit tighter and integrate them into each others' focus episodes more.

Great character for Force and I really liked how they'd just revert to 10 year olds in the early episodes. Would be good as a stay in bed sick watch when too ill to complain about the plot holes. I'm just going to pretend the last two episodes didn't happen though, cause Theo was a twat for most of it and the story ramped that up too far to pass off as poor writing.

Kind, slightly goofy, greenest of green flags Force is a very good Force and that's the reason to watch this.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this. It's intentionally disorientating and one to think about.

GL webseries; pressure to (fake) date/refusal to accept no & misunderstandings take up most of this

Awkward and endearing, fun and quirky but it wasn't something I'd call emotionally satisfying until suddenly it was. Glad I didn't drop it, feels like it might be one that stays with me for awhile. Didn't expect that.

Curious mix of lakorn and rom com with some questionable tropes lightly portrayed with fluff that's saved by being more kind than sugar. It's an odd experience. Puppy love (there are literal puppies) x true love in apparently virginal never been in love before 30 year olds, which contributes to the infantalising of the successfully self-employed FL. So many contradictions but it always comes back to love and acceptance.