Carla

Oooh thank you for the compliment. Off the top of my head, Mandate instantly reminded me of Spare Me Your Mercy (2024) (which lacks/is low in romance, focuses more on murder mysteries and the topic of Euthanasia), Laws of Attraction (2023) which features corrupted politicians, and Manner of Death (2020).

While EP1-6 did not feature explicit romance scenes, it's very clear that they were developing feelings for each other, although ambiguously and slowly because there's no mutual trust yet. The explicit scenes in EP 7 show it's not just a bromance. Mandate dares to go where other Thai BLs haven't gone yet, whether it's the risque portrayal of modern day politicians and backdoor political deals, power shifts and struggles, issues of coalition government, grand compromises, bidder rigging in government contracts, elections and campaigning issues and the corrupting effect politics has on a person. It's actually revolutionary without even claiming itself to be.

(no hard feelings at you op, just wanted to respond to some of your points in case people see the comment and misunderstand that this show is purely bromance, which it is not. in any case, it's more of a slowburn with minimal romance but the relationship is tightly linked with the main political narrative)

i think rather than "ruining" the character, the show more or less examines the potential corruption of a complicated but good natured man by politics (to which Nong himself had asked the question in EP 2, is it bc there are shitty people in politics or politics itself that make people shitty like this)

nong has always been a hot headed guy (if you think about how he reacted to jump and vee tricking him to dropping the other party) but always reasonable (how he offered to dressing up jump's wound after punching him)

it never felt like they were trying to portray a "green flag" male lead or justifying every decisions he's ever made. so there might not even be a need to redeem him at all. this story is really refreshing and novel in the sense that there are no black and white characters, everyone is just trying their best to survive

^^^^ yeah everything OP says. also because if you skip any scenes, you might miss a whole plot line because there are pretty much no filler scenes and the show makes full use of every minute to tell their political story 🤗😉 the romance might be somewhat subtle and brewing in the background but it's very crucial and tightly linked with the overall plot

MONOMAX (https://www.monomax.me/title/105429-mandate.html) if you are in Thailand.
Telasa (https://www.telasa.jp/series/16043) if you are in Japan.

The show has not been officially made available to any countries other than the two above.

I found one of the screenwriters very often share clips of Gale with their caption saying "using the character to say what we want to say". 🤣 it's no wonder why gale is always so on spot and bitey with her questions and remarks during those press concferences. the show is indeed a heavy reflection of thai politics if not to say mirror perfect

you can scroll down further the comments to get some contrasting point of views as well 😅. im probably very biased bc i have somewhat of legal/politics background and i personally enjoy slowburn, complex characters even when they make controversial choices and don't mind if a show isn't explicit

good acting, amazing plot, not too much romance. enjoyable if you like watching shows that are a lot of people talking to each other, making political deals, playing tricks on each other, twists and turns 🤗

https://ok.ru/video/9463098116863

Totally unrelated but somewhat related, I'm from Vietnam and we have two local platforms that constantly buy One31 dramas (especially the hetero lakorns that interfans basically dont get to watch anymore bc there are no fansubbers taking them on any longer), almost every single one. Except very recently there's one drama that they didn't buy which is Love In the Moonlight. Which would come off very weird because they already bough 8 out of 9 airing lakorns on One31, have bought several queer thai bl series from GMMTV on their platforms, why wouldn't they buy one more right? But like that thing just harshly reminded me that selling distribution rights to online platforms are not absolute/done deals, foreign platform don't need to buy every single dramas from a channel, or sometimes they buy them long after it's become popular from fansubbed... just to give you some other perspectives on the whole exporting thai tv matter

I think they're trying their best. It's been a long time since Monomax even sold their series to foreign platforms and its fashion designer Moo Asava first time creating a series with his brand new opened studio. They were able to make a deal with a japanese platform already so japanese fans are getting good subs, they're working out a deal with some south america platform? so i think it's more a problem like they don't have experience exporting their series or selling their series to foreign platforms for distribution or it might also be because this very niche content might be very hard to sell to platforms

I love your observation about the core spirit of the show being about how flawed humans inherently are. I appreciate that there are no idealistically, flawless, squeaky clean politicians in this show, not even Dr Nong, not even his junior Nat all of whom started their politicians' journey with much hopes of doing more for their people.

Mandate isn't afraid to tackle the reality of family members/close relatives taking the fall of their trusted ones but they're not entirely whitewashing this action and Jump's earnest conversation with Ni shed light on regret/guilt, facing the reality that even once he's released/bailed out, there are still society stigma against ex-cons, regardless of whether the person had committed a crime or not. The writing in this show is really something else, very refreshing I think in the current waves of Thai BL series.

unfortunately they're not so im just slowly fixing ep 3 and 4 on my own😅 at least they lessen my load so i can lock in and edit the subs for only those 2 eps left. after seeing ep 7, i have no worries that the final ep 8 subs will be decent as well

watch: https://ok.ru/video/9463098116863
download: https://pixeldrain.com/l/hGtWmJNt

The monomax subs for EP 7 were almost perfect, i only had to add one tiny line for the quick timeskip indication, link below

https://nanamovies.org/mandate-s01-%e0%b8%84%e0%b8%a1%e0%b9%80%e0%b8%94%e0%b8%b7%e0%b8%ad%e0%b8%99-%e0%b8%9b%e0%b8%b5-1-%e0%b8%9e%e0%b8%b2%e0%b8%81%e0%b8%a2%e0%b9%8c%e0%b9%84%e0%b8%97%e0%b8%a2/7/

waiting anxiously until they sub How To Suffer 101. pbs wont even update thai subs anymore for me to auto google translate

Thank you for sharing. Another point that P'Boy also mentions in a few interviews is that he himself is a person who follows politics news a lot himself so it was exciting for him to step into the role of a politician. All the actors in the show portrays really well their politician characters, in their own very different ways and styles.

cuz it would have been nice for them to conclude somewhere on the point that it's perfectly normal and not something to be stigmatised about even if she's not like others

im so happy with that ending. would have loved if they could have delved further into phet and her post partum ptsd and her inability to have intimacy bc of the ptsd