Forest (2020)

The most striking thing about this drama is the visuals, being set in Gangwon province and in the forests there's just tree's in almost every scene. It's got a really unique visual presence compared to most dramas.

Didn't get quite what I was expecting from early descriptions though - so, it's roughly: FL gets sent to the country hospital as punishment, ML turns up with a view to buying the place up for a resort, joins the rescue team to get more knowledge, conspiracies happen, fires happen, bad people do bad things etc. :) I should write them for a living don't ya think? :-P

I enjoyed the main storylines and the romance between the ML and FL but there did seem a couple of times that the FL just decided to move on from a previous issue and forgive rather than it feeling like things had been properly worked out...

The bad guy was really quite deranged and I enjoyed (in a 'throw popcorn at the tv' kinda way) when he was on-screen.

There's lots of touching moments, since it's based around a village suffering from problems and a 119 rescue team.

Park Hae Jin had a commanding presence as always and worked will with the scenes and script, whether he was in mega business-man mode, loving boyfriend mode, or action-man rescue team mode.

Jo Bo Ah - this is the first drama i've seen her in so I need to see more (i'll do that, just for you all, i can take it :) ) to get a broader view but i'm tentatively impressed with what I saw. There were some aspects where she seems to be smiling as she delivers her lines that I didn't think smiling was quite the right thing - so it felt out of sync - but - I enjoyed her performance more overall.

I really enjoyed the side couple with the police officer Oh Bo Mi - while the male in that couple was ok, I thought her character and how she played it was brilliant and then the play-off between her and the FL was great too.

Overall it's a great watch, even if you don't gel with the story for some reason, there's some gorgeous scenery and just a generally quite different feel to it than other dramas due it taking place in the depths of the forests in Gangwon-do.

Read More

Beautifully filmed

I think the star of this show was the forest. It was beautifully filmed, and time seemed to shift whenever anyone was in the forest. I could feel myself relaxing along with the characters. And if I lived in that house in the middle of that forest, I would never leave.

I loved the story between the lead characters. Their relationship spoke to being stronger together, and power of love in the healing process. The symbolism of the healing power of the forest was apparent. Park Hae Jin and Jo Bo Ah did an excellent job. Both main characters were wound pretty tight, but spending time in the forest and with each other softened them, but ultimately made them stronger. They were so cute together, there were a couple of scenes with loving baby talk that I just had to watch multiple times! Seeing Park Hae Jin being playful was worth the price of admission! Their kisses were very lovely (especially the stethoscope kiss!).

Especially creepy bad guy - the actor did a wonderful job, he was really hard to watch and seriously gave me the heebie-jeebies!

However, I felt that this show suffered from too many episodes - it was so drawn out I fast forwarded through a lot of it toward the end, and the ending, as is unfortunately commonplace in Korean dramas, was too rushed.

Read More