Kim Sung-chul, Jung Chae-yeon
I just love it when dramas incorporate music into its narrative in a significant way, so I’m looking forward to how this upcoming show pans out. KBS is a few weeks away from premiering To Jenny (also stylized to.Jenny), which promises a new form of musical drama. I’m not entirely sure what this new format entails exactly, but the show purports to infuse its story of first love with indie music, which sound rather complementary, with nostalgic, bittersweet elements common to both concepts.
Jung Chae-yeon (Reunited Worlds) will play the female lead in To Jenny, who sounds like the plucky type: Even in the face of adversity, nothing can stop her from pursuing her dream. I don’t think you can ever really go wrong with a Candy as your heroine, but I do hope there’s some more layers to her character, because her one-line description in the casting reports make her sound like every drama heroine who ever lived.
I’m much more excited to hear that our hero will be played by Kim Sung-chul, who played Law Man in tvN’s Smart Prison Living. I absolutely loved his character, and was surprised to learn he wasn’t a newbie but a musical actor. I’m hoping he gets to show off some of his singing abilities in To Jenny, where he’ll play a complete innocent who is as lovable as he is hopeless at romance, and uses music to express his one-sided love for Jung Chae-yeon’s character. Too cute.
The show sounds like a low-key, experimental drama for KBS, with a rookie writer (Lee Jung-hwa) and rookie director at the helm (Park Jin-woo). I do hope the experiment pays off, though, since I always appreciate new formats being tried out, and projects that give relatively inexperienced talent a chance to shine.
Music drama To Jenny will air on Tuesday nights on KBS, premiering on July 10.