Watch it for Park Min-Young

Sometimes a show is made by the cast and not the story. This is the case with Her Private Life. This show is about Park Min-Young. She is just incredible in every single scene. Her facial expressions, the subtle shifts in tone, were always delicately done and yet so brilliant in creating a character suffused with this inherent warmth. I cannot emphasis how much I became infatuated with her acting. The only other actor who had an effect like this on me was IU in Hotel Del Luna and My Mister.

Min-Young's chemistry with Kim Jae-wook is incredible. The two fill the show with this beautiful, tender energy. Their relationship reminded me a little of Because This is My First Life but it works better here I think because both these characters are more animated. In fact what I appreciated about Kim Jae-wook was that he wasn't closed-off. I was worried that the trope of the quiet, good-looking man would lead to a wall-off heart and mind and episodes built around Park Min-Young's character trying to unravel his secrets but he was largely open and honest with her. This was refreshing because the show didn't need this as a conflict. Nor did it need the love triangle/square planted in the show but that's a predictable kdrama cliche you are now prepared for. I wish that amount of screen-time had been devoted to showing Kim Jae-wook's character troubled by his early memories.

The plot twist near the end isn't surprising. We all knew immediately why those paintings mattered to him, and that makes it more gratifying that we didn't waste an episode of him not telling Park Min-Young's character what we could all see.

The main blemish is the support cast. I simply wasn't sold on them and that was enough to make me score this a very high 8.5 rather than a 9. I think k-drama writers need better conflicts than love triangles that simply aren't plausible. There was something a little incestuous about this one because of how one of the characters was initially introduced to us in the beginning episodes. Once that was established, it was jarring to suddenly reconfigure it.

I would say though that Park Min-Young was consistently a 10/10 in this show. She made it extremely enjoyable and I'll always rewatch it simply for her acting.

Read More

Excellent drama

Vagabond delivered simply by leaving me wanting a second season. This show had a lot going for it, and its casting was near flawless. I thought Suzy and Lee Seung-Gi were exceptional in their roles. The latter in particular highlighted the relentless determination of his character to seek justice for his dead nephew. At the heart of this reckless drive was a despair that veered onto the edges of breakdowns, and the feeling of a character unable to appease his restless guilt until he fixed this. His character was a joy to watch.

Suzy delivered in her role with a performance of realism, humour and authority that made her character enjoyable. Her character dealt with institutional sexism in an agency that never regarded her seriously yet always came to rely on her. Suzy's character lived through a myriad of emotions and lived through all of them very well. Her and Lee Seung-Gi shared strong chemistry that really left you with the sense that Suzy's character was determined to help him as much as possible. Where they shared intimate scenes, the show's emotional pulse hummed. Vagabond didn't disappoint on the action either, as it was laced with some terrific gunfights and car chases that always ramped up the tension.

It was a plot with a thousand twists and no sight of a straight conclusion. Maybe that works for some and less so for others. It did however leave Season 1 poised on a cliffhanger with another season surely needed to wrap this story up. Overall, a deeply enjoyable show.

Read More

An unforgettable show made by a stellar set of characters

I've just finished watching this show and there's a lot to unpack so bear with me.

I think what I love about this show is it's not written with any grand plot or story conflict. It's a show about life. There's no overriding antagonist in this show, no villain. The enemy is simply life, and the circumstance with which you might find yourself in. Bad things happen to our characters because of life's unpredictability and they adapt reluctantly because that's the reality of growing up. This is a show about teenagers stepping into adulthood and facing some harsh choices in life.

I like that the story is set in the nineties because the world was full of excitement and uncertainty as to what the future would look like. Internet had not made communication as frictionless as it is today and so relationships were more face-to-face rather than online. All of that, combined with a very interesting sport to use, made for the perfect settings for this story to grow.

A show can have an amazing plot and fail because the characters are boring. Or you can have a show with a technically mundane plot thrive through its characters. This is what Twenty Five Twenty One does. It creates an amazing story not through the plot but the characters. They are all, each, lovely people with their flaws and quirks that make them worth spending time with. The support cast are fleshed out enough that you don't need to constantly see Na Hee-Do because you enjoy their stories too. These are real, human beings.

And because of that, the strength of the show was during the first act. Her rivalry with Ko Yu-Rim was intense and beautiful - and it worked because we were allowed to empathise with Yu-Rim. She is a working-class girl barely able to afford anything compared to Hee-Do, with the weight of a nation's expectations on her. She watches her family struggle and sacrifice and knows she needs to win. Even though we are introduced to the show through Na Hee-Do and see Yu-Rim as her opponent, we never see her as an enemy because we are allowed to see the real humanity in her, and that ultimately she's a young woman besieged with so many problems.

Their rivalry drove the show, culminating in that match and then events bringing them together. Once they formed a friendship, the show did really well in making their bond plausible. But its retreat into the backdrop was detectable as sometimes the show lacked an overarching conflict driving anything forward. The show instead became about the five of them as a friendship group and it worked in that the episodes remained enjoyable and we were treated to moving scenes, but it didn't carry the punch that Yu-Rim brought when she was more focused on. That's the other thing; fencing as a theme in the sport didn't really matter as much once Hee-Do and Yu-Rim had that epic match. And when they rematched in Madrid, I thought narratively it would have made more sense for Hee-Do to lose finally to her friend. When it came to fencing, Hee-Do's character was a little too polished. It would have been more interesting seeing her lose yet happy for her friend who had suffered so, so much.

I will also say, episode 14 centring on Yu-Rim was possibly the show's best episode, it was marvellous.

Na Hee-Do was a tremendous character. I loved her energy, resilience, humour and ferocity. She was the highlight of the show, of course she was right? Everything about this character was so good and what I really liked was the show addressed her naivety as simply her still being young. Sometimes when characters do silly things we berate them for it. But with Hee-Do, there is an acknowledgement it's because she's still young and is growing up. I found her relationship with her mother to be a really beautifully crafted one. Again, the show knew how to handle characters and relationships.

Back Yi-Jin was an interesting character. He promised to never be happy yet even when freed from that oath and he had gotten the dream he wanted and the girl he wanted, he was never truly at peace. The nature of his job wore him down and there was a really sincere and realistic portrayal of the slow withering of his spirited nature, until he became quietly depressed and beyond being consoled. We knew his relationship with Hee-Do was never going to last but it still hurt once you could see the writing on the wall, and more so that he wasn't even trying to save the relationship, perhaps aware it was finished.

Regarding the final episode, I've seen a lot of people with mixed opinions. I did enjoy it and thought it was well done but I think that final scene of Hee-Do reading his message in her diary and emotionally reconciling with how they broke up in the tunnel would have been better had they not cried in each other's arms at the bus stop. It would have made their meeting on TV and the final scene far more emotionally satisfying because it would have been the first and final closure they had ever gotten from how they had broken up with each other. That was where the show sort of fumbled its landing but I did still enjoy it. No tears though. Again, maybe that's because I think the emotional punch was sort of tamed by Hee-Do and Yi-Jin finding each other at the bus stop before he left for New York.

Read More

Summer comes back better sometimes

One thing I love about Korean shows is how they display the difference in the lives of those who are rich and those who are poor - the way money restricts our ambitions and controls our choices. I really liked how that was subliminally embedded within the show and explaining how that affected things. The relationship chemistry between the two lead actors was superb and the confusion was sincere and well-constructed. So many times I watch a show where it's very obvious that the two like each other but they're too blind to see it. But in this one, the confusion is born from a lack of communication and inability to read each other, which is established early on as a fault and flaw amongst both of them. Therefore, when they kept misreading each other, I liked that.

I'm quite done with Kdrama love triangles but this one wasn't too cliched and cheesy, so I can give it that. The side characters were rather well-written both in having their own motivations and how they interacted with the show's main characters.

I must talk about the music. There are a few shows which have grabbed me through their music: Hotel Del Luna, My Mister, It's Okay to Not be Okay, Because this is my First Life and now this. The OST in this is quite beautiful and I cannot emphasise this enough. I would recommend this show to everyone.

Read More

Worth your time, but not very memorable

This show will leave you with mixed feelings. It's both brilliant and disappointing, poignant and underwhelming. There are moments charged with emotional intensity sandwiched between scenes of unreal cheesiness. Sometimes the show trips up over its own habitual need to make the characters look cool. Other times, it sells a human story of how grief and vengeance can share an unhealthy relationship with each other.

I should start, perhaps, with the things that I enjoyed. The highlight was always going to be Park Seo Joon because how could it be anyone else? I watched him in Fight for My Way and he is even better here. His character is a sympathetic one, struggling to hold onto his principles because that is the only way he can honour his late father. Their relationship seemed interested but would have been better had it been fleshed out over an episode or two. Understandably, a lot needed to happen so this could not be done.

Kim Da-Mi as Jo Si-Yeo grew incredibly on me. Her character was the heart of the show in that as the story did, so did she as a person, learning to see the way as Park Saeroyi did. The show wrote her character - for the most part - really well and the scenes with her never disappointed.

I also appreciated how the show tackled tropes both in the social sense and how a kdrama show is meant to be. It delved into what it was to be transgender, as to whether ethnicity constituted nationality, rather too simply sometimes but quite well. The humanity of the protagonists shone through here. I also liked that the first love isn't the one he ends up with - although I'll get onto the problems of this later.

The music also complemented the show's tone quite well and bears similarities to Start-Up. But now, let's get onto the problems of which three existed:

1) the show moves too fast. A single episode can sometimes cover years. It leaves characters seeming static. Or sometimes a problem is encountered and then resolved too efficiently. Other things are not actually shown but swept alongside too quickly. How did they first fare as a new pub with customers was sped along. The business plan to go global wasn't shown but just told through an accelerated process. His time in prison. Throughout the show, there was this nagging sense of things rushing at a ludicrous pace while the characters themselves didn't change much.

The next problem is the love triangle. I liked Soo-ah's character at first. As an orphan, her need for survival as an independent woman was understandable. But we never saw her backstory so it was a case of telling rather than showing, which this show suffered from. The whole thing about her joining Jagga Co never added up to me and it culminated in her becoming increasingly hard to sympathise with. Had she joined to protect Park Saeroyi, it would have sufficed as an explanation, considering her own affection for both him and his father. But it was done by her need to survive. Which seemed strange because she could have done that anywhere else.

The show's rapid progress through time actually worked worse for her too. While others around her changed to some extent, she never did. She remained the quiet, silently suffering secretary of a boss she hated, a deeply immoral man who she wouldn't break away from. And so you come to realise that the love triangle wasn't really a triangle because there was no way she could have ever deserved Park Saeroyi. She never did anything for him, but instead for years waited, made him suffer, continued to wait, continued to serve a man who covered up the murder of someone who looked after her, and became increasingly difficult to sympathise with. Her conversation with Yi-Seo towards the end of the show highlighted this: whereas Yi-Seo was doing everything for Saeroyi, she did nothing. She might have been there with him from the beginning but she wasn't there for him. This was the underlying difference between both the women and why the love triangle, though done with nuance, became clear as to who would deserve him.

The final problem, which I'll keep brief is the conflict of the last couple of episodes. It was an unnecessary way to tie up everything because it didn't fit in with what the show had been doing. It was ridiculous and damaged my view of the show.

Read More

A beautiful story that will break, mend and break again your heart

There are only a handful of shows on here that I've rated as 9, and only one that I've rated above that. My Mister easily stands as one of the best shows I've watched, and not simply in the Kdrama genre.

This is a show that combines beautiful storytelling with terrific acting from IU and Lee Sun Gyun. My Mister is a powerful tale that is essentially about family, both when caught in its trappings, and when it acts as a safety net. The two main characters embody this: one who is burdened with a big family that provides him with a constant presence of comfort and love, yet masks its own fractures and pains. The other is a young woman burdened by the absence of one, abandoned by her mother, forced to look after her deaf and ailing grandmother by herself. The rarity of human warmth and kindness makes it devastating to watch when she tries to process Lee Sun Gyun's character displaying kindness without an ulterior motive. To say that these two have chemistry feels insufficient to explain how they decorate the show like a painter crafting on a canvass. They paint the show with a deep myriad of emotions that ranges from heartbreaking sadness, laughter and an underlying longing for something more. My Mister is a story that subliminally speaks of the importance of human connections, and the little yet utterly transformative imprints it can invariably leave on someone.

The show is rich with a tangible and tragic sense of quiet despair undercutting our lead characters. Both are grappling with the overwhelming realisation that this is life and it is not enough for them, but rather dysfunctional to the point of slowly disintegrating them where they exist in the company of others but only really come alive when with each other. They fear the possibility of hope for a better future but desperately crave it. The sense of oppressive depression that emanates particularly from IU's Lee Ji-An is palpable. This is a woman who is, figuratively speaking, dying slowly, day by day.

IU's acting is peerless and she delivers a breathtaking quality to her character, a morally ambiguous young woman whose actions are reactive, born from the need to survive and protect her grandmother. There are these small little moments that the show litters throughout that illustrate just how abandoned she has been, how badly she has needed a helping hand during her life, and never had it until she met Park Dong-Hoon. And from telling him early on that she isn't at all curious about his life, her days and evenings slowly revolve around being close to him in his intimate moments, however unethically. She finds something in this that goes beyond a job. This was beautifully written and wonderfully acted.

Lee Sun Gyun is also terrific in his role. I thought his character was sometimes too much of a martyr but his desire to keep peace and pretend everything is all right is a realistic portrayal of people who cannot confront their problems and admit things that are too difficult because of how it will unravel their lives. The show depicts this very well. Park Dong-Hoon prefers peace over conflict but often at the expense of his own sanity.

If I had any issues with the show, it would probably have been around the side characters. Park Dong-Hoon's family, especially his brothers, take up an awful lot of screentime and whilst they are likeable characters, they're not nearly as interesting as IU's character. Sometimes I found myself just waiting for their scenes to end just so we could get to moments with Lee Ji-An and or Park Dong-Hoon.

I would absolutely recommend this show, but be prepared for its emotional heaviness. There aren't many shows that are remotely comparable to My Mister.

Read More

An explosive tempest

I was really looking forward to this show because of the trailers. I did have my doubts because of the last show I watched Han So Hee in - Nevertheless, which was very underwhelming. I also thought this show might become like Vincenzo which had a shallow humorous tone that belied what felt like a serious storyline.

I was needlessly worried. This was a great show. Han So Hee was great, carrying it on her back like a woman determined to get justice and revenge for how bad Nevertheless was, never mind justice for her character's father. Her backstory felt a little rushed in the first episode but that was until I realised this was an 8-episode show. Then it made sense to explore her grief and love for her dad throughout the show rather than condense it in the opening act. Instead we were served to a fast-paced, intense show that explored heavily the theme of betrayal and finding solace in anguish. Han So Hee's character was someone who was a prisoner of her pain. Her partner, who turned out to be one of the standout characters of the show, was the epitome of grief that had healed through time.

What sold the show for me was that the antagonist was likeable, a sympathetic man of fleshed out motivations and desires. You can understand where he comes from. And in a show that deliberately centres around the morally ambiguous choices of our protagonist, this makes it a lot more emotionally enriching to watch.

The music complemented the show very well, I thought the close-up camera shots really fed the intensity and character-centric feel of the show. All in all, a worthwhile watch.

Hats off to Han So Hee, she was sensational.

Read More

Glamorous to a fault

Extremely good looking lawyers, fancy cars, shady people, cheesy dialogue against a hue of dramatic music - no this isn't the American show Suits. This is however, a show that favours style over substance. That perhaps should have been clear to me when I saw it was rated 15, meaning the dialogue and action scenes would sometimes be a little more embellished than necessary. Quite often I was cringing whilst watching some scenes. There's a lack of suspense and tension because our lead protagonist, by being a member of the Italian mafia, is endowed with a level of skill and access to fortune that makes you believe he can overcome problems in any scene by the end of that scene. The show rarely builds up conflicts that aren't resolved within that immediate episode. Every bit of tension is quickly fixed with an unexplained resolution or a random character suddenly displaying a new set of skills that were never hinted at before. As the lead female character remarked during one episode, "is everyone here a hidden genius?" it's a funny line that poked at the show's main problems. For all its glamour and sparkle, there was a crippling shallowness to its writing.

The story premise itself is interesting and there are some character dynamics that deserved far greater focus. Every character has some interest family backgrounds and motivations that, had they been fleshed out, would have made the show more enjoyable to watch. When the show did focus on these angles, the storylines were generally of high quality. In particular, episodes 14 to 16 were brilliant because the show knew what to focus on. Mostly this didn't happen for too much of the show. As it was, the show did keep you going through the leading acting duo's chemistry and skills on screen. I thought that Vincenzo Cassano was an excellent character even if it was difficult to believe he was ever in any real danger.

Overall, this show is good to watch but you won't get much out of it. The interesting, and potentially heart-tugging arcs that it had never received enough attention to make the show very memorable.

Read More

Start-up let down by not focusing on its best character

I'm very conflicted about this show in that whilst it's generally very good, occasionally excellent, it suffers from a glaring kdrama problem that it just got pulled deeper and deeper into. 

The main issue for the show is that it had two highly interesting subplots created by two very different conflicts for the main character Dal-mi, embodied ultimately in two characters who happened to be more interesting than her - through no fault of her own. 

The first, and fundamental problem, is her sister In-jae. She is arguably the most interesting character in the show and yet is an afterthought for most part of the show, someone who appears sporadically in moments to unsettle and fluster Dal-mi before disappearing for the rest of the episode. 

She is the show's standout character for someone who exists on its periphery. Her conflicted relationship with her sister, her mother, her stepfather, even how she feels about her late father and grandmother could have really tugged at the heartstrings in displaying the similarities and differences between her and her sister. The story of a rich girl determined to make it alone and not off her dad's wealth - faced with the inner anguish of secretly wishing she had stayed with her sister - is far more interesting than a love triangle. This should have gotten far more screen-time. Start-up suffered in her absence and thrived when she was in the room.

The other problem, which sort of explains In-Jae's limited time, is Do-san. The nature of his role in this show necessitates him having such a large amount of screen-time. This is the problem of Start-Up. It has two very interesting plot conflicts that compete against each other for time, and suffer. Do-san's role in this story during the first half was defined by a burgeoning romance and a complicated love triangle forming that simply put, was not as interesting as Do-san's own inner conflicts. His need to prove himself to his family, to be the man he thought Dal-mi viewed him as, coupled with his own rising guilt of repressing the truth of a conspiracy he was dragged into, was more interesting than seeing a love triangle taking place. 
Do-san's character was portrayed really well, and he was easily far more likeable a character than Ji-pyeong - who often came across as nefariously scheming and mean-spirited- but the show really didn't know how to explore Do-san's betrayal without having a love triangle. This took away screen-time from the audience seeing more of who Do-san was and of simply giving us more moments with him and Dal-mi. 

The love triangle just didn't have to exist. This conflict could have been explored through Ji-pyeong viewing Dal-mi in a platonic way. Far more interesting than his feelings for her was his sense of debt and guilt towards her grandmother. I think had the show pursued this road instead, and given us more time to see In-jae, it would have been far better. 
Speaking of Ji-pyeong, there was a very strange introduction of a new setback for him involving one of the Samsan Tech's developers. When you watch it, you realise it's strange and feels as though it was lobbed in there simply for drama. It simply wasn't required and made the support cast even more underwhelming. Again, it's screen-time that the show should have given to fleshing In-jae out or showing Do-san's life of feeling like a disappointment. 

Aside from the characters, what I didn't like was the sheer lack of fallout from certain things. The big secret that Dal-mi eventually had to find out barely left an impact on her relationship with others. It's hard not to feel as though the opening half of the show, which was genuinely impressive, was let down badly by the episodes from the midpoint onwards. At that point, it felt like the show was in a state of managed decline where even though scenes and episodes still retained humour, emotional punch and good dialogue, I couldn't escape the disbelief of how quickly the very big gaping plot conflict of the show was handled. 

That's a lot of negatives for a show I generally really enjoyed! The positives are that all of the main characters are hugely likeable and depicted well. Dal-mi isn't the standout character in that she's a very conventional protagonist, but she does her part supremely well, and is engaging in how embattled she is, and how much she perseveres. The show explores her relationships to various characters well, and it also has some really touching moments, such as what fuels Do-san's vision for the company. 

I thought Dal-mi's grandmother was a fantastic piece of the show, and far more integral. I appreciated the sprinkles of memories of Dal-mi's father over the show, and how it virtually affected everyone. And whilst I wish that had received more attention, it was still written very well. I can't fault the dialogue either. Generally it was very grounded and realistic. 
There are some stellar episodes: 7 through to 9 were particularly fantastic, compensating for the show slightly stalling in the 5th and 6th with some forgettable episodes (featuring unnecessary secondary character drama). Its's worth noting that in those stellar moments, it's typically Do-san and In-jae who shine the brightest for me.

Read More

A warm and refreshing dose of escapism

I loved this show. From the moment it began, I was enamoured with it. The acting of the lead pair was brilliant in exhibiting the right energy and aura of their characters. An urban raised middle-class girl with smug dismissal of the poor rural countryside folk and the man with little ambition in life other than to see the sun rise the next morning. This show was great. I enjoyed how it introduced and warmed us to the ethos and social norms of the town folk by essentially taming Hye-Jin's assumptions and forcing her to see the beauty of a simpler, less noisy life. Yes there's fewer opportunities to stardom, but there is peace and relative sanctity from malicious gossiping and the choking competition and judgement she faced back in Seoul. I loved how she was portrayed, and found her character to be refreshingly engaging, easy to sympathise with. Her flaws weren't ever annoying traits but understandable ones that made you empathise with her.

Chief Hong was a vibrant male lead and he had to the right amount of exuberance and compassion to make you love him. Plus, he is a really beautiful man when he smiles. I'm a heterosexual guy and I'm telling you right now - I got butterflies whenever he was laughing.

The show was carried by the chemistry of these two whenever they shared a scene that helped bridge the differences and create a grudging respect for who they were. Watching them fall in love didn't feel stale because of its inevitability, because they still wrote the scenes with realism. The show was also helped by not focusing too much on an overarching plot ahead of its character directions. Though this sometimes created problems when it came to laying the seeds for conflicts concerning Chief Hong, it meant you could get more invested in the characters.

I loved the town folk - the support cast were terrific. I was less interested in the film crew and didn't have time for those scenes but that's really my only quibble with it.

Overall, this was such a good show.

Read More

Spellbinding, captivating stuff

This is a show that will linger in your mind long after you are finished with it. It is captivating, heart-wrenching, beautiful, devastating, cruel and agonising. The story of two detectives connected by an old walkie-talkie solving cold cases is a fantastic concept and this show did not falter in exploring how far it could go. I've never watched a show that has finished as strongly as it started.

Signal deserves a longstanding reputation as one of the greatest TV shows in Asia. For that, the writers and the actors deserve so much credit. They delivered with each episode. There was no silly subplot, no silly love triangle. This show was coldly ruthless in telling the story it wanted to. The magical realism imbued it with excitement but it was the human story, the struggles involving the characters, that won you. They were all good people trying to fix the old wrongs. At the heart of it was Lee Jee-Haan, the old detective guided by a an unmoving moral compass always pointing the right way. His emotions, the intensity of his resolve and ethics, was beautiful. The music complemented the show superbly too and accentuated the tone of every scene, adding rather than diminishing.

I would recommend everyone to watch this show. You will cry, you will sit in despair, your heart will ache for them. But you will watch it all the way through believing in them as Lee Jee-Haan did in justice. This might just be the greatest Korean show i've ever watched.

Read More

A show sold by the characters and the actors

I was rewatching I'm Not a Robot when this popped up and I decided to give it a go. Maybe because of that, I was drawing comparisons between two shows that consisted of a human being falling in love with something artificial, or seemingly anyway. But the comparisons end there. This show has characters and a setting that, by being less comedic, is more rugged and realistic. The characters are all sort of broken, and it doesn't take much for something to revert them back to their damaged selves. This is what they fear the most. This show was good at detailing how the warmth of human relationships can fill up one's life like decoration and although the plot wasn't very complex, it was made worth watching by two things: the characters and the acting performances.

I really really enjoyed the chemistry between the lead duo. I really enjoyed their characters too. These are people who simply want to live quiet lives, don't have grand ambitions, but just are fundamentally good people. This is what made me like the show a lot.

If I have any criticisms, it's that the show could have told a story about how relying on technology as a crutch to compensate for absent relationships. I also wasn't sure about the backstories of some of the characters, but every show has its fault and I wasn't complaining too much.

I'd highly recommend this to someone.

Read More

A sombre apocalypse

Calling this an enjoyable watch feels wrong given I was holding in my stomach for most of it, either at the nail-biting tension or the exploding moments of gore and blood. But it was an excellent show. It built up the sense of crisis, the hopelessness and through it, the characters. The relationships that were formed were organically done and realistic, and thus made you root for characters sometimes simply because of what they meant to everyone else. This show did really well in highlighting the importance of family and social rootedness because people are stronger when compassion is plentiful. I've always found Korean shows to be thoughtful in the social analysis of these things and this show hinted well at that.

The other thing they did well with was the issue of survivors' guilt. Living on felt very difficult for characters but giving up was a betrayal of the memory and sacrifice of those who died for them to live. I thought the show was beautifully written in that way. The casting was good and there was an innocent charm to a lot of these characters, who ultimately, were just teenagers having a very rotten school week.

The standout character was Nam-ra and her ending was beautiful and deserved. Her struggle for clinging onto her humanity manifesting in that feral shriek of despair at the end really underlined the sheer goodness of her character, her overwhelming desire to hold onto the essence of who she is and not give in. I give the show 5 stars for how it wrote her, she quickly grew into the most interesting character.

The show had some excellent sections. Moments when they were trapped in one place for too long only to escape and get trapped elsewhere within the school and then during the second half of the show when their movement was more fluid and constant simply because staying in one place, they realised, was just delaying the impending doom. The final two episodes of the show blew me away because many things I did not expect to happen took place. Even though the ending was a little foreshadowed, it was a deserved one but everything else during those final episodes left me stunned. In a zombie apocalypse, there are no main characters with plot armour.

There were things I didn't like. Far too many characters had heroic deaths to the point where it sort of lost value. It was more gripping when people are trying to escape but the zombies take them. I think the hero complex was a real problem with Cheong-San. I liked him a lot but I was tired by his need to always elect himself as the sacrificial lamb for the group. I also thought how his death came about was foolish. They were all just standing there while he was slowly getting attacked. it didn't make sense especially given Nam-ra's superhuman feats that she just stood there.

Then there is Nayeon's character. I cannot accept that she purposefully infected someone just to be proven right. Her death was sad in that the group didn't realise she had only died due to her desire for redemption. I was a little annoyed at first before I realised it worked out better like this. It would have been too neat for her to reconnect with them.

My main issue perhaps, is the idea that this virus began because someone's dad got fed up with school bullying and decided humanity was irredeemable and evil. You're telling me that's how everyone got infected? I lost all sympathy with him when he was talking about how the system failed his son because of what he then transpired to do. There were also some payoffs I was waiting for, such as the girl who got videotaped getting her revenge during the apocalypse but the show didn't even hint towards that.

Those were my only real complaints, because otherwise it was an entirely excellent show.

Read More

A well-constructed delight

This show's synopsis drew me in and it didn't disappoint. The story juggled some heavy themes whilst balancing with a degree of humour that didn't turn the show into a queasy mesh of comedy and grief-laden moments. I liked how the tragedy wasn't the actual focus, and that rather the story centred around how those who either survived or lost loved ones were forced to move on. Often with stories focusing on fatal incidents, it's the aftermath that is the most interesting. So it proved with this show.

The two characters, Gang-Dun and Mun-Su were exceptionally well-written. Both characters are hurting but repressing it through very different ways of living. One is in a state of gradual self-destruction seeing life through nihilism while the other lives but without much hope and a lot of guilt. The show expertly navigates the issue of guilt of surviving a loved one, of feeling like you are cheating their memory whether you cope well or don't. I give this show a lot of credit for how it handled grief and guilt, showing how things like self-imposed isolation, alcohol abuse, seeking violence and self-harm were reactions to trauma.

I also really liked that while the mall's collapse wasn't the focal point of the show, it was the focal point of the lead characters. This is good storytelling. The music complemented the show's tunes throughout. I liked that as we delved more into the show, characters gave very nuanced and complex responses to situations, new relationships formed organically and felt authentic and meaningful. We were given time to care about characters and their attachments and bonds, given time to understand that these people were suffering.

There were only two things I didn't really like: Gang-Dun's sister, the doctor, struck me as oddly cold and indifferent. Whether that was by design or bad acting, she often came across as unsympathetic to what her brother was experiencing, bereft of even any gratitude or guilt that she lives well because he suffers greatly.

I also didn't like Mun-su's boss. He was unprofessional in his conduct towards her, his behaviour often creepy and inappropriate and she even called it out. I thought that was a really unnecessary angle the show didn't need, especially as it was clear from the first episode who the love story had to be about. This show was about Mun-Su and Gang-Dun healing together by finding each other, falling in love and letting go of their shared trauma.

Overall, I massively enjoyed this show.

Read More

Better than Season 1

The second season of Dr Romantic was a welcome surprise. I'm not used to Kdrama shows that have more than one season but the nature of this show meant that you could justify extending the show's existence for another year. As it happens, Dr Romantic came back with a better story and arguably more interesting cast of characters. As ever, Doctor Kim remains the heart pulse of the show as he shapes a new crop of doctors, each with their own inner demons. I enjoyed the new cast, particularly their competitive friendship that slowly blossomed, rather predictably, into a relationship. This was overall a really good show, and the second season was better than the first.

Read More