Like half of the planet, I too am majorly into Korean shows these days. No Squid Game or Korean rom-coms for me. But even if you don't watch rom-coms or fictionalized game shows where characters get killed for money, there are plenty of stars to gaze at in the Korean media multi-verse. Here is a list of my favorite Korean streaming content that I had been bingeing on :
Reply 1988 : 1988 in Korea was not very different from the 1988 in my part of the world, when I had just entered my teens. We had small boxy cars, CRT TVs and sat on the floor and had dinner even when we had a proper dining table. Reply series is an anthology series with 3 seasons. It started with Reply 1997 in 2012, Reply 1994 in 2013 and Reply 1998 is the last season that started airing in 2015-16 and the only one I have watched in its entirety.
All the seasons are disconnected except a common concept that they are all about a group friends and their lives during a particular year, a turning point in their lives. Some of the actors re-appear, playing a different character in a different season. The last one, Reply 1988 is the most popular and by the third season it looks like the makers of Reply series had perfected the formula for success. Reply 1988 is one of the highest ranked TV series in Korean cable TV history.
Reply 1988 is the story of 5 families with teenage kids in the same neighborhood of Seoul growing up in the late eighties. The success of the series is the connection you will develop with the characters as it progresses - all fifteen of them. With 20 episodes almost an hour long it is a serious commitment, but once you get hang of it, you wouldn't want to get off that train. I almost gave up after first couple of episodes, but I am glad I did not.
Below is a quote by the female lead from the very last episode of the series. She is the one in the middle row, dead-center.
“1988. This is the end of our Ssangmundong story. Longing for that time and longing for that street isn’t because I miss the younger version of myself. In that place, where we won’t be able to gather like that again, I regret being unable to say my final farewell. To the things that are already gone, to a time that has already passed, I want to say a belated farewell. Goodbye, my youth. Goodbye, Ssangmundong.”
Hello, My Twenties (Age of Youth in Korean), season 1 : 5 girls sharing a house as they embark on their college journeys, part time jobs and share their growing pains. Been there. Done that. I could relate to it more than I could ever relate to Sex & the City or Friends. Both of those I have only watched sporadically, before the days of Netflix or other streaming platforms. How can Carrie Bradshaw writing a worldly wise weekly column in some New York newspaper afford to live in an upper East side brownstone? What could be more further from reality than her implausible NY life with her craze for Manolo Blahniks?
Sisyphus - The Myth : If you like sci-fi, you might like Sisyphus. The lead actor from Stranger is also the lead in Sisyphus, that is what first lead me to it. It is also TV-14 which meant I was able to watch it with my kids. Sisyphus is not exactly the best of the best K-drama and it only appeals to a certain kind of audience. You have to check reality and logic at the door. It was good for a light one time watch.
Chicago Typewriter : I find that with Korean dramas or probably it is the case with every foreign language TV series or film, if I like some of the actors I try to find out if anything else is available on Netflix or Prime that these actors have been featured in and if there is, I give it a try. I started watching Chicago Typewriter when I found from Wikipedia that one of the actors from Reply 1988 was in it and it was available on Netflix. Also the theme of the show looked intriguing - how were they going to establish a Korean connection to Chicago, through a typewriter? There are only a handful of characters, and it could be summarized as a sort of time-traveling ghostly love triangle involving a typewriter. The three main leads are strong and convincing. You cannot apply human logic to ghostly deeds so even if you have questions you can attribute the lack of answers to the ethereal nature of the story.
A couple of other Korean TV shows I had reviewed are here - Tunnel & Signal. These are the shows which got me started on K-drama, in case you are looking for a gateway drug to Korean content and don't really care for rom-coms.
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