Watch out what you wish for, i.e. complexity of life made messier by friends

You go through your problems and then a dear friend accidentally kills a prof, getting his friends to cover up to protect him. He drowns in depression until he meets the widow in a hospital and cares for her through volunteer work.
The friends are not that friendly to each other as one (a divorcee violent with his gf) is bent on make his pal's marriage crumble hoping to grab the wife, whom he feels should be his. He leverages an old acquaintance, who has her own agenda (she has cancer and wants to score the guy before she dies).
The marriage does fall apart, but no one wins.
Everyone pays and is left to pay for their sins in a Buddhist weltanschauung that permeates the whole series.

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PHENOMENAL! PHÉNOMÉNAL! FENOMENALE! PRIMA!

WAIT before watching something after "Beyond Evil": subsequent series/movies will feel bland or boring. "Beyond Evil" (I don't like the title, hence I left it to watch it when there was nothing else on Netflix) requires concentration and you'll get rewarded BIG time.
One thing that is amazing is how you can at times barely guess what is going to happen. As a rule of thumb, you can't. Let yourself immerge in the events shaking fictional Manyang village next to fictional Munju town.
Unsure whether the lack of romance adds or detracts from the series. There was the possibility to develop something, and my bet would have been Oh JiHwa (ladies first) and ML DongShik as well as Yoo JaeY and ML JooWoon. The author chose not to.
The music fits both in terms of when it appears and what it sounds like.
"Beyond Evil" is another high light of 2021 kdramas, and bodes well for the future.

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Truly charming and enjoyable

A woman dying of cancer starts off the attempt to gather her old school friends, as well as the personal journey of NaMi, who was asked to find the old friends. The efforts and NaMi remembering the old days make it for a very enjoyable movie.
The movie could be used in university courses when teaching about leadership, transformational leadership etc. Chun Hwa, the leader of the group in school, and now losing her battle to cancer, shows time and time again why she is a leader. She fights to retrieve her friends caught in a confrontation involving the military, demonstrations and a rival gang of girls. She does what she can to help, and ensure the unity of the group, ... and in the end, from beyond her casket, she pulls yet another giving the grown up women a sense of hope, and trust in themselves (you have to see it).
The proof the movie is good? Not only will these actresses go on working in many productions as leads, secondary roles and performing cameos, but something must have clicked among them as well. For the next 7-8 years you will find the actresses, who were playing the highschool roles, working 2 at a time, 3 at a time, together in movies and kdramas.

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Mieux que le machin d'Hollywood

J’avais essayé de voir la série originale, l’américaine, mais je pense avoir bien fait de laisser tomber et passer à la série coréenne, qui est loin d’être une copie et est bien meilleure que le machin d’Hollywood. Honnêtement j’aurais aimé voir moins de morts, par exemple en permettant des survivants dans l’effondrement du parlement. En autres j’ai un faible pour l’actrice Kim GyuRi (ma femme le sait), et je conseille vivement son dernier film "The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil", où elle est l’experte de la police en matière médico-légale.

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Did the writer show herself in the story?

The story is so vivid, it must have been based on eyewitnesses, and then turned into a story.
I myself can testify to the realism. That Korea of 1986-1987 was so similar to the one I saw in Summer 1988 when I went there for the first time ( demonstrations at Ewha, tear gases in the street, German TV crew filming, signs in a Jamsil church asking the military not to gas the building, demonstrators meters away from the Catholic cathedral just in case the police would charge, ...).
The short segment with music only, showing the girl thinking about writing the illegal work, is nothing short of amazing.
A detail towards the end of the episode struck me. Among the students preparing for a demonstration a female student with a bandana in the background is writing a sign. She reappears holding her sign during the fight when the police throws tear gas. I asked myself: is that a cameo of the writer of the KBS episode?

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Sometimes stop for a sec and look at what is positive

The leitmotif is the unraveling of what happened to the FL. Why did she try to adopt a different personality and name to outsiders,? Why did she try to retain her earlier self in front of her friends?
The crux of the matter was the fact that after she reached rock bottom, she met a man by pure chance, and they mutually fell for each other. Thereafter, her friends didn't give up on her, he didn't give up on her, and she realized that she had not given up on herself either.
Around this display of human all too human activities, we find the people with whom she interacts, and their own issues: money issues, love issues, personality issues, drinking issues, image issues, ...
Notice that all this is done without killing, gore, explosions, hostage takeover, politically correct preaching, and other nonsense that plagues so many other productions (HINT: if Hollywood-style stuff is what you are looking for, this show is NOT for you).
Personally I didn't like the product placement (can't stand the stuff they label as pizza in the show), but otherwise it is extremely sweet, with real sweetness and not fake carbohydrates.
Of particular charm were the scenes throughout the series where one could see that people cared for each other.
The police cared for the drunk ML and other hosts at the station. The actress wanted her first kiss from someone she liked and not some famous "pig". Both FL and ML cared about his wedding ring, which he threw in a fit in a canal (him trying to retrieve it after she had gone there and found it, was particularly ironic/good). The restaurant owners at the beach give food and a chance to the FL. When looking for the usually drunk girlfriend, one guy mistakes another drunk for his gf in the street.
Sometimes it is important to stop for one second in life and look at what is positive. This series does that.
Please enjoy it.

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Watch the series, and you'll want to watch it all over again.

While the rich chase the best positions in companies, the downtrodden try to survive. This series focuses on the latter screaming from the depths of humanity.
Screaming and being heard.
JiAn is a young outcast ready to do anything to get out of debts imposed on her by creditors, who conveniently "forgot" that she had no duty to accept the debt.
While working in a company she experiences what had eluded her until then: falling for someone.
Towards the end, DongHoon locates JiAn on the run to make sure she won't have to testify and reveal humiliating details in the life of DongHoon and his wife. DH locates her and enters's JiAn's small room. The scene is akin to a human feeling like a worm when Divine Grace presents Itself (I am unworthy, don't come close to me ...). She got saved!
The wasn't the only one, who bettered her life. Her paralytic and mute grandma died in peace, her accomplice GiBom escaped prosecution, her abuser KwangIl redeemed himself, couples were saved, people found jobs, ...
Watch the series, and you'll want to watch it all over again.

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Original series

Overall it is a cute series, which deals with a serious question (franchisees), which is totally worth watching.
Originality is a key factor here.
The depiction of the fights in Episode 1 proposed points, which I had not seen elsewhere (see it for yourself), and reproposes one of the tough girls from the movie "Sunny".
The small group of girls is interesting as each one has her own personality. Also look at the initial reaction to the convenience store's friend ("an austrolopithecus? werent' they extinct?").
The series also shares several points with the series "The fiery priest" (e.g. some of the music is almost identical, and a sense of sarcasm here and there) due to the fact that both series were directed by the same person.
Finally, I loved the way they made fun of Joseon series (though I do like some series portraying Joseon), imitating the speech, announcing with loud voice and drums the arrival of the secret (some secrecy!) royal inspector, the actress getting called on the set while she was removing her Joseon zombie attire and speaking with a normal eye and one with the zombie lens.

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Each episode moves you closer to heaven

The series let's us explore life through the eyes of dying/dead people, who are unable to tell lies. We get to see the facts, and if you wish to do so, you get uplifted. The leitmotiv is thus very different from a rom-com (there are hints throughout, but little development, leaving it to the viewer to hope for more, again uplifting you), or a standard drama.
Though there is no direct reference to it, this series is akin to Dante's Purgatory, the second part of his masterpiece, the Divine Comedy. A soul having seen the worst in hell, is now climbing to heaven amidst other climbers, until he is "puro e disposto a salire alle stelle", in such a state that he can reach to enter heaven.

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A movie resonating through any diaspora

The movie portrays young people going to Korea to spend a few weeks to discover the culture from which their parents came from. The movie was great in chosing as much as possible actors who were of Korean origin, though born/raised outside of Korea, giving additional realism to a movie, which could have easily sunk into nonsense or as a copy of USA coming of age movies.
Some parts are phenomenal, e.g. having the real singer Kim WanSun from the 80's singing her song Tonight as a bar singer, or the incident at the DMZ.
Coming myself from the Italian diaspora, having married a Korean, and living in neither countries, this movie was special to me. 감사합니다/grazie

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A strong series among the romantic ones

Happened to notice this Strongest Deliveryman right after watching Start Up (2020). Both series deal with the formation of a company, a delivery company in one case and IT companies in the other case.
I find Strongest Deliveryman better written, with secondary characters better developed, better music, and a better crafted ending.
In spite of the writers of the series being different, the series share points, which cannot be coincidental. Here are two:
1. grandmas running eateries, who in both series play a fundamental role in starting the companies;
2. Kim Seon Ho, who has the second male lead role both series, is nicknamed "good boy" in both cases.

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A solid series

Stranger 2 is different from Stranger 1 in many ways, e.g. here we have - alphabetically - police vs. prosecutors as leitmotiv (and the "incest" between the two that has been hinted throughout the episodes, but has not fully come to light).
I am glad about that, because some series start great, and then just rehash the same stuff.
Having said that, I am wondering why Stranger 1 steadily increased its viewers share (in Korea) from 3% to 7%, but this series is stuck as a yoyo between 6% and 7.5%: market saturation for this kind of series?
In all fairness, one cannot write a complete review until the series is over, and there are so many loose ends right now, that I am expecting a great finale.

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Caveat spectator! Watcher beware!

Slow dialogues extending until people fast forward, motionless actors, cookie-cutter stuff (everybody gets cheated, everybody gets divorced, everybody gets ...), endless placement product of horrible coffee, lousy music, ... The only redeemable features are a few smiles from a few actresses, the fight between would be daughter-in-law and crazy would be stepmother-in-law , and the two supernatural beings at the very end (quite different from the standard in other series).
Take home lesson: life can be messy, ... but I had already found that out prior to this series.

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When chickens come home to roost - big time!

Who killed the heir of a powerful family in Thailand? In this case we have a Sino-Thai family with links to the hotel world and police. Little by little suspects with different motives and weird or no alibis show up.
The murderer is revealed towards the end.
Though wait: it isn't over. The dynamic of the killing and the reason behind only emerges at the very end, and with the reason emerges much more "dirt", as well as redeeming stuff.
Interesting insight into infighting in a powerful family, where you might guess ahead of time some of the elements going on, but never everything. Worth watching. Highly recomended.

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Light and fresh comedy

I looked for something to watch while waiting for the new episodes of "Vincenzo" and "Sisyphus", and bumped into "Another Miss Oh".
No regrets.
Loved the mom ("today is the day I kill her", "you can keep her" ...) always looking out for her daughter, though trying to show that she doesn't.
Loved the fact that among the members of the two original couples there were no bastards, but merely victims of the circumstances. Too bad that the author did not give a glimpse of what happened to TaeJin and Pretty Oh HaeYoung (simply showing one dating and/or applying for a job, or deciding to attend the wedding notwithstanding the earlier mess).
Not too crazy about the punk girl and her boyfriend.
Could have improved, and better rehearsed, the French spoken by SooKyung, e.g. the "embrasse" in the elevator, and the other guy saying "better get out". Having French instead of standard boring English was however refreshing.
Loved the beach scene where one of the girl is also called Oh HaeYoung and is unrelated - of course - to the two other Oh Hae Young from Seoul.

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