Tv

Million Yen Women exists in torrent form. I'll take a look.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to find another Korean drama fix. I finished Goblin, and by jingo it was good. The one or two quibbles I had with it pale into insignificance given the seeming dearth of equivalent dramas.

I've recently tried...

Descendants of the Sun - could be good, watched one episode and saw that it had drama potential if only I didn't find the characters so very unremarkable and the story by and large non-existent

You Who Came From the Stars - big hit in China apparently, but again with the inaccessible leads - aloof and distant characters can be damn interesting if they aren't so entirely opaque, and airhead beauties can be enjoyable if they're at least whatshername the Hollywood actress with the red hair and teeth, but the airhead in this story is just noisy.

While You Were Sleeping - actually not bad, and if you watch the first two episodes, you've probably seen everything you need to see...

I expect Signal will be as good as everyone says so I'll probably watch that one. I'm also going to try out City Hunter and The Guardians, and one or two out there choices for me, Scarlet Heart Ryeo and Boys Over Flowers.


Starting out with Goblin(and the quite pleasant Entourage) might have set the bar way too high. I don't know I can find the like again. 

I'll give the Chinese drama industry another chance too. Shall take a look at Nirvana in Fire and see if it's good like everyone says or yet another period drama with everyone in clean clothes

I still have to wonder what the world is watching these dramas on. Must be some tiny screens out there because sixty minutes of tv in a 1080p file format cannot be a mere gigabyte big and still look good.

Shall take a look at Nirvana in Fire and see if it's good like everyone says [...]

Nope, it's not.

I mean, it must be right up a lot of people's alleys but right off the bat there's way too much clever deducing. Dudes sitting around stern faced hearing news that prompts, in effect, beard stroking? Pffft. Dudes (and the nefarious women who advise them) spending their time plotting plots isn't drama. I suppose of course it must be drama to someone, but I don't see how...

It's such a staple of Chinese drama though, dudes being inscrutably clever. I am definitely not grasping some inherent cultural value here.

Signal - 시그널 - (2016)



Korean police procedural with fantasy elements. A police lieutenant in 2015 is able to communicate with a mysterious detective in 2000 via walkie talkie at a time when a serial killer is active. I'm two episodes in and the drama is excellent. (Marred by a truly irritating aesthetic choice - the screen aspect ratio changes during flashbacks - everyone gets tall and thin - whoever decided on that should be fired and never let near tv production again.) Worth it.

 

Stranger - 비밀의 숲 - (2017)



Also called Secret Forest. A prosecution procedural this time. A star prosecutor is investigating high level corruption and murder within his own department. Violent events in his youth have him labelled a "psycho" even as he is seemingly emotionless now. Co-stars Bae Doo-na, who you'll recognise from a Hollywood movie or two.

 

Signal - 시그널 - (2016)

Imperfect, but pretty great nonetheless. The story shifts kind of wildly every so often when they move on to the next crime, and the tone is not always predictable, but the drama stays compelling, probably because of the on-point characterizations. (In that regard Profiler Park could have been calibrated a little better but he does a lot of great work otherwise so.... And there's thirty minutes tacked onto the end that the show didn't need but pffft.) Overall:

Enjoyed.


치유되지 않는 아픔 - 시그널 OST

I caught the first 5 episodes of Young Sheldon on a recent flight.  I was worried it would be a disappointment, but it ended up being quite good.

EL, Young Sheldon starts on TV in Brisbane tonight. I will take a look at it!

If you like Big Bang Theory, you should enjoy it.  If not, it could be odd.

One Suits closes



Another Suits opens



It's distracting at first that Jang Dong-gun in this iteration looks a little like Pee Wee Herman (and that Choi Gwi-ha so is Louis and yet so is not) and also that the first episode is so similar to the first episode of USA Network Suits that it invites too direct an opulence comparison (and comes of second best), but it's growing on me already. I'll see how the next episodes go. It'll go better if they can get out from under the original's shadow.

Park Hyung-sik is probably the perfect Mike Ross tho, wrong bicycle choice notwithstanding.

Dramaworld (2016)

Kinda crap, actually. Not enough drama, a little too like sketch comedy gone serious, and no one has enough charisma to make the show work (apart from, ironically, the flower shop guy) (and I did also keep wondering where I'd seen "Seth" before - he was Eli, the lead guy in Gook).

But...

Still and all...

Not bad.

Ten short episodes about a kdrama fan who gets transported into Dramaworld, the tvland where kdramas happen, and how she messes it up. Kinda not worth it if you're not a fan of kdrama (and you can't make it through the first two episodes) but it does have some moments after a while. Just wish the writers had given the actors better stuff to work with.

It's kind of interesting how there's all this nearly-amatuer stuff going on with korean singers/actors. They have the money to do it, but not quite the skizzils. This one comes from Viki, a video streaming website no-one's heard of unless they've been looking for kdramas and subtitles. But they had the money and they had the contacts, and Netflix screened it too.

 

Moonshine and Valentine - 结爱·千岁大人的初恋 - (2018) - (aka. The Love Knot: His Excellency's First Love)

aka wut?

Would watch for Vicky Song, who, as is known to all, is both Chinese and, when she's called "Victoria", is the leader of kpop group f(x), but still have to ask why, why oh tv gods, why are cdramas so lifeless? Even with a car chase there's like nothing happening? Banter falls like bricks. A main character is introduced and for one minute does nothing other than literally stand in place with nothing else happening. Wut? I am surely missing something, I must be. Fox spirits, a 900-year-old love, only the guy knows it, he's freakin rich and a weirdo.... shyeah, why don't they do an actual remake of 2016's kdrama Goblin instead of this plaster cast version?

No stars. Maybe it gets better after the first episode but I shall never know.

Meanwhile...





My Mister