kdrama recs???

[lirazel]

Alright, I've finished The Guest and loved it and now I need something new to watch. I've been out of the kdrama loop for several years now, so I don't know what's been good the past few years.

I'm looking for:

+ something serious. no comedies, please.

+ but not melodrama

+ really good relationships of any kind (romance, family, found family, whatever)

+ good female characters

+ contemporary

+ Sticks the landing at least decently

+ bonus points if it includes a prickly, difficult to love woman who nonetheless gets loved

Also somebody tell me if Save Me is any good; cults are definitely my thing but it looks too dude-heavy.

My favorite kdramas of this kind: White Christmas, Healer, The Guest, Shut Up! Flower Boy Band (look, I know, but it's serious enough to be on this list there is so much crying in that drama), Beyond Evil, Mawang, City Hunter

Other kdramas that aren't really of this kind but that are my faves: Age of Youth, Queen In-Hyun's Man, Coffee Prince, Replies 1997 and 1988, It's Okay Not to Be Okay, Flower Boy Next Door, Crash Landing on You

Comments

[lauradi7dw]

I mentioned "Run On" the other day, and would be curious what you think. It's one of my favorites. It definitely has prickly women who are loved in it. It also has a variety of the polite/not polite speech as plot points (not just the guy who claims to only use 반말).

[sleepyshamrocks]

twenty five twenty one! it's got one of the best depictions of love i've ever seen in a kdrama: love that exists in old photos of you and your friends that one summer ages ago, love between rivals who understand each other best in the world, love that hopes and tries to endure hardships. it's really good!

[adore]

i recommend 'avengers social club' (three women become besties to save one of them from domestic violence) and 'stranger' (a prosecutor and policewoman team up to solve things and also become besties, and the prosecutor had a bit of his brain removed that's supposed to make him emotionless but he isn't really!)

[chestnut_pod]

My best friend would never forgive me if I didn't take this opportunity to urge you in the strongest possible terms to watch Stranger (Secret Forest) with Bae Doona and Cho Seungwoo. I also agree: a tale of rampant police corruption and Bae Doona doing the absolute most. There are lots of wonderful relationships, foremost the one between Bae and Cho, which is not romantic, but profoundly touching. It's a dark -- it's a murder mystery -- but it's not over-the-top, and it definitely wraps up the mystery well.

[snickfic]

Off topic, but I saw this and thought of you:
https://fandomcalendar.dreamwidth.org/1012193.html

Might be rtyi, if you're up for an exchange with a quick turnaround?

[lirazel]

Very relevant! I'll have to see what people are nominating--thank you!

[whimsyful]

Thirding Stranger/Forest of Secrets - the best way I can describe it is that it's a really tightly written and wonderfully acted mystery, and the descriptions of the male lead make him seem like the stereotypical Cold Asshole Genius but really he's more like Choi Chi-hoon from White Christmas.

After a long drought I'm suddenly watching a whole bunch of kdramas and cdramas, but the last one I completed and really liked was Little Women. It's written by the same writer of The Handmaiden, so it's a Gothic thriller take on Alcott's original, and with heaps and heaps of femslash added. Loads of interesting female characters and relationships between them - I think it took something like three quarters of the way through the show before it remembered to pass the reverse Bechdel test?

Also going to rec My Mister/My Ajusshi - I and most of my flist passed on this show when it aired because of the large age gap between the leads (and the male lead actor is currently in hot water in Korea due to drug use), but I finally watched it a while back and it is a masterpiece. It does something I haven't seen often in kdrama (or media in general) where the relationship between the two leads is incredibly deep and important--they change each other, they save each other, and they get each other on a fundamental level in a way nobody else does--but it is not romantic, or at least not romantic love in the way commonly portrayed. One of the best parts of the show is the way it depicts this relationship which really can't be put into any neatly defined boxes -- I'd be curious what you make of it.