My Dear Lady (Chinese Drama, Viki)
Proving the old saying that when it rains it pours, our heroine, a newly divorced woman who is already having trouble finding a job ended up damaging our hero’s very expensive car. Determined to become financially independent so she can get her son back from her ex, our heroine decides to pull out all stops to convince our hero, a very successful young CEO of his own company to hire her as his personal assistant.
This one being a noona romance I was a tad bit worried after watching the show’s promo that our hero would look too young next to our heroine. Fortunately, my worry proved to be none issue once I started watching the show. The Chinese title of this one is actually “You have successfully caught my attention” which is an inside joke for C-novel readers where some rich hero will tell heroine with this overused phrase “Woman, you have successfully caught my attention…” The show has done a great job in giving our hero the traditional super smart/cool vibe of a successful CEO yet added a bit of vulnerability and cuteness one often finds in the heroes in noona romance. I usually love noona romance but lately I haven’t found one I could stick with so I am quite excited that this one looks to be very promising.
My Unfamiliar Family (Korean Drama, Viki)
As the show title suggests, this story centers on the theme that while blood might be thicker than water but some families still live their lives no better than strangers. Already reeling from their mother’s abrupt announcement that she and their dad has decided to live separately (aka. marriage graduation where couples live as if they are divorced but are not actually legally divorced), three siblings hardly know how to act when their dad ends up suffering amnesia that left him believing he is only 22 years old. While all three siblings and their parents will have their own storyline, the main focus is on the second daughter, a publishing editor who has not dated for six years after a bitter breakup with her boyfriend that also caused a rift between herself and her older sister AND the ending of a precious friendship with her best friend.
The director of My Unfamiliar Family had warned that this show might be so real that it would make viewers uncomfortable…and that’s totally true. The first two episodes were very engaging but they were definitely a bit uncomfortable to watch because it’s one of those shows that reminds you of your own hidden trauma that one usually likes to forget. I am not quite ready to put this one on my watch list yet but will give it another couple of episodes.
And the Winner is Love (Chinese Drama, Youtube Eng Sub)
As the young mistress of the infamous Fire Palace, our heroine has grown up wanting to prove to the world that her sect’s sacred martial art “Lotus God Nine Stance Technique” is not evil even if everyone else believes her father was driven to become a mad killer after practicing it. Venturing out into the treacherous pugilist world, our innocent heroine soon realizes she has stepped into a world full of conspiracies and dangers. Fortunately, our hero, famous for his handsome looks, impressive fighting skills and popularity with women has been tasked by a mysterious man to be our heroine’s protector.
I don’t do well with overtly innocent heroines so I struggled with this one at first but thankfully once the story gets going I found the heroine much more tolerable. As for the hero, I love how suave his character is. In a land where most heroes are the distant aloof sort, it was refreshing to have one that’s not so.
Brilliant Heritage (Korean Daily, Viki)
Grandpa Bu has a problem. With old age comes with the disappointing realization that despite having three sons, none of them are either capable or willing to take over his famous 50 year old noodle restaurant that he has worked all his life to build. Instead of caring about keeping his legacy going, all his children seem to care about is how much of his vast wealth they will get after he is dead. Determined to teach his sons, Grandpa Bu decides to pretend to marry our 33 year old heroine. Quite successful on his own thus completely uninterested in his father’s inheritance or working in the noddle shop, our hero is disgusted when his father unexpectedly brings home our heroine whom he is convinced is just a gold digger. Unable to stand idly by while his father is in the clutches of a gold digger, our hero decides to get involved personally…which will of course lead to very unintended results…
This one is a K-daily that has been airing for a while (we are at 30+ episode now) but I wanted to hold off reviewing it for a bit until I can be sure the synopsis of our heroine marrying a man old enough to be her grandpa THEN having a romance line with the son is not going to feel icky. I am happy to report that while the set up still feels a bit wrong when you really thinking about it but it really doesn’t feel icky at all. Rather, it feels more like a prank gone hilariously wrong. The show’s pacing is pretty slow since it took about 30 episodes before the story finally progressed to the point where our heroine shows up at our hero’s house as his “new step-mother”. However, the fact the show took the time to really set up our heroine’s storyline with our hero before her fake marriage to his dad is most likely why the subsequent storyline is not off-putting. Brilliant Heritage is a fairly typical K-daily in that there are tons of annoying side characters but I am enjoying it enough that I am willing to follow it with liberal use of the fast-forward button.
You Are My Destiny (Chinese Drama, Viki)
This one is a remake of the 2008 classic Taiwanese drama “Fated to Love You” that starred Ethan Juan and Joe Chen.
A timid and mousy office girl, our heroine’s quiet life is suddenly thrown into chaos when a cruise trip goes terrible/wonderfully wrong. Left on the cruise ship alone after his girlfriend ditches him on the day he was set to propose, our hero ends up helping our heroine get rid of her no good two-timing boyfriend. After a night of drinking, our two leads wakes up the next morning to find themselves married AND in the same bed. Fully aware that she and our hero might as well be from two worlds, our heroine wants nothing but to disappear from our hero’s life so he can continue on to have a blissful future with his ballerina girlfriend. However, the drama gods obviously have a different plan in mind and our heroine soon finds out that she is pregnant.
I didn’t think I would be interested in this one since I tend to have a hard time with remakes. However, the show surprisingly didn’t feel like a remake at all since it changed enough of the storyline that it felt like watching a new show. Now, the core structure of the story is still there so I imagine our two leads will still go their separate ways after a bit and our hero will have to work hard to win back our heroine after she has finally matured into a confident woman. Anyhow, I enjoyed the first six episodes enough that I will be keeping my eyes on this one for now.
Lost Romance (Taiwanese Drama, Viki)
Horray! It has been ages since I have been excited about a T-drama, let alone follow one so I am really crossing my fingers this one will be a winner.
As an editor of a publishing company that specializes in romance novel featuring arrogant and forceful tall and handsome CEOs, our heroine’s dream is that one day she too will have such a dreamy romance. Knowing full well that her dream will most likely remain just that, the one joy in our heroine’s life is to daydream about our hero- He Tian Hang, a CEO whose office is close to her own and who might as well be the protagonist in one of her romance novels.
Torn with fear and guilt after she accidentally witnesses our hero falling off a building, our heroine wakes up one day to find herself transported into a romance novel published by her own company named “CEO, so Naughty” with He Tian Hang starring as the naughty CEO. Despite the fact that the He Tian Hang she meets in the novel is quite different from who he is in real life, our heroine decides as a seasoned romance novel reader she can surely capture the handsome CEO’s heart easily…that is until she finds out the role she has been given is not the novel’s female lead but of the evil female secondary character.
I love the premise so I really hope the show can pull it off. The first episode felt a bit slow since it was all spent setting the back story up and our two leads didn’t even meet in person but I am still quite excited! It of course doesn’t hurt that actor Marcus Chang who plays our hero really is one who looks like he could walk off the cover of a romance novel…plus, you know T-drama, they are exceptionally good at offering fan service scenes when they choose to be.
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I dropped and the winner is love. The characters are too boring and Leo Luo even got more skinny so that he can’t make a believable hero for me especially since 2nd ML actor is sizzling hot and his pinky outshines LL’s entire being. LL still is a real good actor but the script and FL actress are lacking a lot.
Isn’t enjoying the winner is love. It is refreshing to have an all powerful guy who isn’t a stone faced cold person. He is such a flirt and naturally charismatic. It’s fun. And he looks good in white. If it follows the book it will get lamely dog blood towards the end. Let’s hope they will change that up.
I’m so in with Lost Romance even though the first episode was just to get us into the story. Good thing was that it didn’t showed too much of the characters and their true intentions what hopefully make them more 3-dimensional in future and we surely will have the story end in “RL” too. I’m so curious.
And I really love how honest they described the romance novel industry for the stories to be so repetitive and why.
The premise of Lost Romance is reminding me of The Romance of Tiger and Rose. Thank you for sharing these weekly recommendations! Only qualm I have is that it is a Taiwanese drama so I’m going to have to wait a while before I can start it (since they only release one episode a week huhu).
Both have actually a premise that is quite popular with romantic webnovels: Transmigration into a novel or comic. Most times the stories are a bit repetitive since they are going on forever and there characters are one-dimensional at best. But Lost Romance seems to be on the darker side and that is what intruging me.
Yeah, TW Drama and its once a week airing schedule was always a pain. I don’t need 4 each week but 2 like the KDrama would be nice. I should have waited too but I never learn *lol*.
That’s so true. We are spoiled by C-drama or at the very least K-drama where we have two episodes a week.