While KBS has changed the English title for You, Whom I Met By Chance to the beyond vanilla Run Into You, I’m still hopeful that this time travel fantasy will fulfill all of my time travel drama requirements: i.e., please be good. Though the premiere date is still pending, KBS has been dropping character stills like crazy. Stills are nice, and so are really fun teasers, but I’m already ready to see more of this drama, and how it deals with all of its potential time travel hijinks.
Kim Dong-wook (King of Pigs) and Jin Ki-joo (Showtime Begins) star as our time travelers — they shoot back to the strangely popular year of 1987 (seriously, dramaland, what’s up?) for different reasons. New anchor Yoon Hae-joon (Kim Dong-wook) is trying to solve an old serial murder case — for what else does a hero do these days? — and Baek Yoon-young (Jin Ki-joo) is trying to stop her parents from marrying. Okay, that’s a little more interesting, and creates lots of fun possibilities.
Back in ye olde 1987, we have a younger cast, with Seo Ji-hye (who was so much fun in Love All Play) playing our heroine’s mother, and rookie Lee Won-jung (who had a guest role in Extraordinary Attorney Woo) ostensibly as her love interest.
While I’m curious to learn more about our heroine’s purpose to destroy her past, I’m actually more curious about the mechanics of the story — do they really travel back in time with a car? Is there a flux capacitor involved? Why does present-day Jin Ji-koo look even more ’80s than her mother? These are things I need to know.
Directed by PD Kang Soo-yeon (Tale of Nokdu, Ghost Detective) and PD Lee Woong-hee, and written by by Baek So-yeon (Tale of Nokdu), Run Into You is slated to broadcast January 2024 in the Wednesday-Thursday slot.