Good Casting (Korean Drama, Viki)
Choi Kang Hee’s new comedy crime thriller where she plays a NIS agent who is well known in her field as the “nutty one”. Having already lost several top agents trying to capture the ever mysterious and elusive criminal “Michael”, the NIS is forced to form an unlikely task force with our heroine as one of the members.
The first episode came off more like Charlie’s Angels so I was expecting the rest of the show to carry on the same flavor and be fairly sparse on the romance part. However, after watching episode 2, I was pleasantly surprised that our “angels” will end up going undercover in a big corporation AND it looks like we might have two love lines! It seems like our heroine will end up getting hired as the CEO’s secretary…the CEO who happens to still be harboring a crush on her from 15 years ago.
Intense Love (Chinese Drama)
Youtube has this one without subs but it looks like some smaller sites might possibly have English subs if you google it.
Intense Love is a fairly light fluffy romance between a popular female celebrity and a handsome doctor. Not thrilled when their parents are determined to keep a marriage promise made back when they were still babies, neither of our leads showed up to their own engagement dinner. Thanks to a car accident that sent our heroine to the hospital, our two leads finally meet in person and miraculously fall in love at first sight with one another.
This one is a bit weak in terms of acting and story but if you are in need of fluffy blush worthy C-romance then this one might be worth checking out. I would highly recommend checking out C-drama Girlfriend first though if you haven’t yet.
Three Lives, Three Worlds: The Pillow Book (Chinese Drama, Viki)
I finally took two days to finish marathoning this one. It was super cute! It was of course like 10-15 episodes longer than it needed to be but that’s kinda what you get with C-drama. I was especially pleased that the drama took some liberties and made our hero extra adorable (compares to the novel) once he figures out he is in love with our heroine. For the record, the show did follow the novel fairly closely and actually did a great job clearing up some of what I thought was more confusing parts of the book.
Fix You (Korean Drama, Viki)
A psychiatrist at a hospital, our hero (Shin Ha Kyun, Less Than Evil) cares deeply for his patients and tends to employ some unconventional method to help them. Greatly dismayed when one of his patients ended up ruining a rising actress’s big moment, our hero is stunned when he later meets our heroine again as a patient who needs help dealing with her anger issues.
The premise of the show feels a bit stale since this seems like yet another “healing romance” and the first episode didn’t really convince me otherwise, but I have always been impressed with actor Shin Ha Kyun’s ability to play a wide range of roles (especially the fact he can go from serious to scary to charming and to funny effortlessly) so I am tempted to give this one a chance anyway.
Autumn Cicada (Chinese Drama, Youtube Eng sub)
I have been quite impressed with Allen Ren’s performance in Under the Power and The Destiny of White Snake, so I was intrigued to see how he would do in a C-period drama as opposed to the C-ancient fantasy genre that I am used to seeing him in. I will have to admit that after checking out Autumn Cicada, I still prefer Allen Ren in his previous roles, but that’s probably mostly due to my aversion to C-spy dramas.
Set in the year 1941 when Hong Kong was under Japanese occupation, Allen Ren plays a Chinese national who is a trusted assistant to a Japanese general sent to rule over Hong Kong. Despite his close ties to Japan, our hero is actually a Chinese agent under the code name of autumn cicada.
My Love, Enlighten Me (Chinese Drama, Viki)
Her dream of debuting as a singer dashed when the three person girl band she belongs to is abruptly disbanded, our heroine is forced to go into the real world in search of a new dream. Gratefully taking up her best friend’s offer to let her stay at an old family home, our heroine is stunned when her sister’s little brother unexpectedly shows up. Clueless that our hero is actually part of reason why her band was disbanded, our heroine begins an “enlightening” cohabitation with our hero.
The premise sounds fairly stale, but the show actually feels refreshing with a good balance between light heart comedy and emotional depth. Our hero’s character has autobiographical memory which means he remembers every single detail in his life. The story obviously plays on our hero’s autobiographical memory quite a bit but they have managed to use it in such a way that it doesn’t feel like they are hitting the same note all the time.
Oh, My Baby (Korean Drama, Viki)
Jang Nara’s new comedy romance where she plays a 39 year old single woman working as an editor for a parenting magazine. Armed with a wealth of parenting knowledge but no hope of a marriage proposal in sight, our heroine decides that she can’t wait any longer to be a mom. As it happens, just when our heroine is ready to give up on men altogether, three love interests (a smart alec photographer, a long time friend who is more like a brother, a young newbie at work) show up in her life. Judging by the amount of screen time given, I am placing my bet on the photographer.
Episode one felt quite slow but luckily, episode two was much better. I am hoping now that we have introduced all the characters, the pacing from this point on will be more like the second episode’s. I really don’t care for dramas where they make you guess who is going to get the girl, but this one seems to make the ending obvious enough that I will probably give it a chance.
Note: I have been told that K-dramas on Viki might not be available to all regions.
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For me The Pillow Book followed the book a bit too much. I like the novel but still the writing is average and the most characters lack dept. I wish they had taken liberties like in Peach Blossoms. I still adored the side characters. My favorite is Si Ming. He is a total gossipn & DH-FJ shipper but takes his job very serious.
Problem also was that Vengo makes a great DH but his other two characters not so. I was LMAO when FJ’s human character died and he had to yell. It looked so funny. The lovesick part afterwards was okay. I shipped FJ with the General way more. He had a way better chemistry with Dilraba.
The biggest problem for me was that FJ was a Damsel in distress here and even when she wasn’t she was moping and sad. I missed her spunky and playful side. She is a fox spirit and not some lotus flower.
My conclusion: The series is really gorgeous to watch in terms of cinematography but the script is just some average sappy fanfic with a leading actor who could do better.