Tag: TV

K-drama review: Misaeng

Misaeng poster
Jang Geu-rae (pictured with armful of folders) learns what it means to be a salaryman in this drama.

This TV show is a little hard to categorise, but I guess I’d plump for…office drama? It’s quite serious and low-key, and apparently won lots of awards when it first aired (tvN 2014). Misaeng is sometimes listed with its subtitle (and translation) “An incomplete life”, which gives quite a good indication of its overall tone.

As we learn early on, Misaeng is a term from the board game Go (or Baduk in Korean), which is relevant because the show’s main character Jang Geu-rae (played by Im Si-wan) is a former professional Go player. He wasn’t able to earn enough money to live on from playing Go, so he has given it up and is now taking any job he can get without a degree. When a rare opportunity for a proper office job comes along he takes it, even if it is an internship for something he has never particularly wanted to do: sales.

At this company – One International – rumours run rife, which means that everyone immediately knows that Geu-rae didn’t go to university and was recommended for the position by someone senior. He also has no office experience and doesn’t speak any foreign languages. This does not go down well with his fellow interns or with his new manager, Oh Sang-sik (Lee Sung-min). Manager Oh is brusque and loud, but turns out to be honest to the point of pissing off many people around him, which means he is actually a good match for eager, innocent Geu-rae.

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K-drama review: Because This is My First Life

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Because This is My First Life still
Lee Min-ki and Jung So-min co-star.

Finally, the first K-drama in a while that I have thoroughly enjoyed without any caveats. Because This is My First Life (TvN, 2017) is unashamedly romantic but also modern and, dare I say it, feminist?

Nam Se-hee (Lee Min-ki) is an app designer who is struggling to pay the mortgage on his home. Yoon Ji-ho (Jung So-min) is an assistant TV writer who can’t afford to rent a place on her own in Seoul (she had been sharing with her brother but when he gets married their parents decide Ji-ho must move out). So it’s initially an ideal situation for Ji-ho to rent Se-hee’s spare room. They’re both in their 30s, reserved, love football and like to keep a clean home.

It becomes apparent that other people are uncomfortable with the idea of an unmarried man and woman living together. So they do what seems logical: they get married, promising to each other that it is purely a financial arrangement. But of course, not only does the rest of the world have ideas about what marriage is, they also find themselves questioning what it means for their relationship to be quite so transactional.

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K-drama reviews in brief

Reply 1994
In Reply 1994, Sung Na-jung (centre) winds up marrying one of the five men in her life – but which one?

I have been trying to learn a little Korean on Duolingo. I enjoy learning new languages and I figured this was one I might actually make use of semi-regularly – to understand more of the K-dramas I watch. Not that I expect to be able to do away with using the subtitles, but I had already learned enough to notice some differences between original and translation. (That isn’t necessarily a failure of the translation – a literal translation is often not the best solution.)

Which is to say, no I have not stopped watched K-dramas, I just haven’t been reviewing all of them because I have less to say about some than others. I’m not going to stop reviewing them altogether, but I thought this might be a good time to reflect on some more briefly.

Toward the end of last year I watched Reply 1994 (tvN 2013),which is the second of three series with the same basic set-up. In modern-day Seoul, a group of friends are gathered together and reminiscing about the year when they all met: 1994. The action switches between 1994 and 2013 and the concept is that the female lead Sung Na-jung (Go Ara) has ended up marrying one of the five men who co-star – but which one? They all shared the same house during university and have stayed in touch, but the husband is not revealed until the final episode.

It’s a really cheesy concept and I found the contrivance immensely annoying, but other than that this was an enjoyable show. Most of the annoying K-drama tropes were mercifully absent, the relationships felt more realistic than many I’ve seen, and there were details of the recent-historical setting that added interest for me. The other two Reply series are also on Netflix so I might check them out.

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K-drama review: Abyss

Abyss poster

Not the classic 1989 sci-fi film, I’m talking about the glossy new tvN/Netflix series Abyss – though it is arguably also sci-fi. Or maybe crime drama. Or fantasy. Somewhere in-between, with a large dollop of romance thrown in. Of course. This show makes little sense but is still fun.

In the first episode we meet most of our protagonists, but don’t get too attached as there are multiple deaths. Cha Min is a young businessman (and heir to a fortune, natch) who has just been dumped – and fleeced out of money – by his girlfriend Jang Hee-jin. He is devasted and attempts suicide, but as he dies he is approached by two…spirits?..who revive him and hand him a glowing orb they call Abyss. They tell him he can revive other dead people with Abyss but there are rules he will need to follow. Oh, and he has a new body now that is a truer reflection of his soul – he goes from plain/odd looking to very tall and handsome (now played by Ahn Hyo-seop), which in theory gives us some insight into his character.

Min’s best friend since childhood is prosecutor Go Se-yeon. She has been working on a serial killer case, and just as she thinks she’s closing in on the culprit, she herself is murdered. Min is devastated and decides to put Abyss to use but he can’t get to her until after her autopsy, by which time the whole country knows she is dead. Min is considered to be missing (as no-one witnessed his suicide) and is now the lead suspect in Se-yeon’s murder. He has to explain quickly to Se-yeon why she is waking up in a morgue faced with someone who looks like a total stranger and why she really shouldn’t interrupt her own funeral when she doesn’t look like herself anymore.

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K-drama review: Descendants of the Sun

From left: Captain Yoo Si-jin, Dr Kang Mo-yeong, Sergeant Seo Dae-young and Lt Yoon Myung-ju.

I know, it’s barely two weeks since my last K-drama review and this show is 16 hours long. No wonder I haven’t read much. My excuses are twofold: I was a bit brain foggy and I found this series addictive. From the first episode of Descendants of the Sun (KBS 2016), I knew I was in trouble.

After the low stakes of Coffee Prince, this drama was much more serious, but still sweet. It opens with an impressive set piece in the DMZ between North and South Korea. After soldiers from both sides of the border fight with knives in a stand-off that the public can never be told about, the triumphant leader of the South Korean commandos removes the scarf covering his face to reveal our hero: Captain Yoo Si-jin (Song Joong-ki).

Our heroine has a slightly less violent introduction but is still instantly impressive. Dr Kang Mo-yeong (Song Hye-kyo) is a surgeon at a big hospital in Seoul. She’s great at her job but keeps getting overlooked for promotions because she doesn’t have connections. She doesn’t take any shit from patients but does get on well with her colleagues and is willing to suck up to her superiors so long as it doesn’t break her moral code.

Si-jin and his best bud Sergeant Seo Dae-young (Jin Goo) are on leave and enjoying a funfair when they foil a robbery. The thief, Kim Gi-bum (Kim Min-seok, who I know from Doctors and Hello, My Twenties) is taken to hospital, with Si-jin and Dae-young in pursuit when they realise he still has one of their phones. Dr Kang initially thinks they are hoodlums harassing her patient and refuses to let them near Gi-bum (who, for reasons that I could never figure out, has as his next-of-kin Dae-young’s on-off girlfriend Lt Yoon Myung-ju – a military doctor who trained with Dr Kang). But when Gi-bum tries to run away from the hospital, he runs into a real gang and ends up being saved by Si-jin and Dae-young in the pilot’s second excellent set piece.

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K-drama review: Coffee Prince

Coffee Prince advert

I haven’t written about the last few TV shows I’ve watched, but this one had some interesting quirks that I thought were worth a blog post. Coffee Prince (MBC 2007) was a successful enough show that it’s been remade in at least four other countries and the old cafe used for the main set was turned into a real coffee shop that’s a popular tourist attraction in Seoul.

The set-up is that our heroine, Go Eun-chan (played by Yoon Eun-hye), is a 24-year-old androgynous-looking woman who is often mistaken for a man and rarely bothers to correct people. She is the sole wage-earner in her family since her father died, and is determined to earn enough to send her younger sister Eun-sae to college, which means that she works several low-paying jobs. In the first episode, she meets the two men who will be rivals for her love, and of course they are cousins and close friends.

Choi Han-gyul (Gong Yoo) is the heir to a major food corporation and after spending a few years in America “dabbling” with being a toy designer, his grandmother is keen to get him suitably settled down. Her first aim is to find him a wife, so Han-gyul hires Eun-chan – who he thinks is a man – to play his boyfriend who breaks up every blind date. Eun-chan doesn’t like Han-gyul but she has just lost one of her jobs and needs the money.

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K-drama review: Don’t Dare to Dream

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Don't Dare to Dream poster

I loved this show so much. It’s not groundbreaking or original, but what it does, it does well. Don’t Dare to Dream, also known as Jealousy Incarnate (SBS 2016) is about TV news, family, love, jealousy and…cancer. It’s well acted, hits both light humour and real emotional moments in every episode and the credits feature cartoon aliens. It truly has everything.

Pyo Na-ri (played by Gong Hyo-jin) is a weather broadcaster who is frustrated by her TV station refusing to give her a permanent job and treating her as a general dogsbody, but can’t risk quitting as she needs to earn good money to support her younger brother Chi-yeol, who is still in high school. At work she is always professional, but at home she’s a bit of a mess, constantly behind on rent and shouting at Chi-yeol.

She jumps at an opportunity to work on a shoot with news reporter Lee Hwa-sin (Jo Jung-suk, who was the lead man in Oh My Ghost – another K-drama that I rate highly), who she used to have a crush on. She had hoped this was finally her chance with him, but instead meets another man who takes Hwa-sin’s place in her affections – businessman Go Jeung-won (played by Go Kyung-po, who I swear looks like Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who is Hwa-sin’s childhood best friend. Na-ri and Jeung-won begin dating, much to the despair of his mother, who is hoping to use his marriage as a business deal.

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Dorama review: You’re My Pet

Kimi wa Petto poster

At some point I will have to stop calling the set-ups of these Japanese and Korean dramas odd. I’m sure a lot of my preferred English-language TV sounds just as strange when you summarise the basics. Maybe that’s just my taste in TV generally. But I did find the tone of Kimi Wa Petto (Fuji TV 2017) quite strange to begin with.

This show is based on Yayoi Ogawa‘s Japanese manga Kimi wa Pet serialized from 2000 to 2005. The comic won the 2003 Kodanisha Manga Award. It’s a largely predictable, slightly cheesy romantic drama, but enjoyable all the same.

Our heroine Iwaya Sumire (Noriko Iriyama) seems very serious and capable, but she is struggling to maintain a professional front after being dumped by her boyfriend of five years and then demoted after rejecting advances from her boss. Drunkenly stumbling home, she finds a young man (Jun Shison) on her doorstep who reminds her of her childhood pet Momo and offers to adopt him. He is homeless and has just been beaten up, so he gladly accepts.

Their relationship is initially cringeworthy (Sumire gets “Momo” to beg for food and other dog-like tricks) but when she learns that he is in fact Goda Takeshi, a ballet dancer of some renown, their relationship changes to…roommates? Friends? Siblings? They quickly become very affectionate and comfortable together.

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K-drama review: Secret Garden

Secret Garden banner

Like everyone else, I was devastated (in a good way) by the ending of Fleabag. Unlike (I’m guessing) everyone else, my reaction was to seek out the most cliched happy-ending romance I could find. And where better to find that than K-drama? This was one of the titles recommended to me early on as a K-drama classic, so I figured it would have the necessary ingredients.

Oh my. This was the most addictive K-drama for me since Boys Over Flowers. It’s from about the same time and covers much of the same territory, so that makes sense. In Secret Garden (SBS 2010) our leads are stuntwoman Gil Ra-im (played by Ha Ji-won) and CEO Kim Joo-won (Hyun Bin). As these tales always begin, she is poor but badass; he is rich and a total douche.

They cross paths when Joo-won steps in to help his cousin U-yeong (Yoon Sang-hyun) – who is a Hallyu star better known as Oska – escape a thorny romantic entanglement with an actress. When Joo-won tries to collect the actress from a film set, he accidentally ends up with her body double – Ra-im. The two immediately have a sparky, catty back-and-forth and it’s clear that hate will turn to love.

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Dorama review: Midnight Diner

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Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories

This Japanese TV show exists in many versions – largely with the same actors – but I am here referring to the Netflix series Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories (which is arguably season 4 of the show originally aired on MBS). Tim and I love this show so much.

It’s a simple concept: at a late-night diner (open from midnight until 7 a.m.) in Shinjuku, the chef-owner cooks whatever dish his guests request. The camera lingers on the cooking, but this is a drama about people. Each episode takes as its subject one of the regular customers. In this way, the episodes are largely separate stories.

Midnight Diner has a wonderful atmosphere – warm, cosy, but within the confines of reality. The acoustic background music adds to the sensation of being in a friendly backstreet bar where there is always gentle hubbub and subdued lighting.

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