Lovely Writer is about a BL writer who is dragged onto the set and casting of his first BL series. The lead actor of the series starts flirting with him and they fall in love. The chemistry was great and the acting solid. It launched as a fun show, light hearted for all it poked at the BL industry. What it did beautifully (like Oxygen) was correct for some of BL’s fatal flaws. There were no consent issues, cutout characters, or gay for you. Even the family coming out sequence was honest and fairly dealt with. Yet it still managed to hit most of the Thai BL tropes I have come to expect and even a few yaoi ones I love.

Simultaneously the series confronted issues within the BL industry: depictions of non-consent; catering to market pressure; forcing actors to performatively flirt and hide existing relationships; product placement; fan obsession and stalker behavior; and the complacency of studios, agents, and directors.

It ended up being one of my favorites of 2021 (only the finale was a bit drawn out for my tastes) but it suffered from one fatal flaw - egregious sound effects, overused and CONSTANTLY applied cartoon noises particularly in the first half. The sound tech should have been canned after Episode 1. I found it so distracting I docked a whole point for it. Still this was one of the best BLs from Thailand in 2021.