JTBC’s new Friday-Saturday drama The Third Charm might not be high-concept, but I love a good romance-through-the-years story, and this one promises to be sweet and sentimental, and judging from the pictures, utterly adorable. Seo Kang-joon (Are You Human Too) and Esom (Because This Life Is Our First) star as a couple who’s fallen for each other’s “third charm”—the thing that makes otherwise unremarkable people shine like stars in your eyes.
The drama comes from PD Pyo Min-su (The Producers, The World They Live In, Full House) and writers Park Eun-young (Maundy Thursday) and Park Hee-kwon (The Flu), and is described as an epic poem that follows a couple through the four seasons, over the course of twelve years. We’ll follow the couple from age twenty to thirty-two: spring at age twenty, summer at age twenty-seven, and fall and winter at thirty-two.
The seasons are metaphors for the stages of their romance, which begins with sweet budding feelings at twenty years old (featuring a very nerdy Seo Kang-joon and Esom in a cute bob). Then things heat up with the summer of their romance at twenty-seven, which is the stage pictured in the posters and the almost-kiss scene below. They’re described as an unusual couple that’s been together for seven years but is still on day two of their relationship. I don’t know if that means they took forever to make it official, or they just can’t keep their hands off each other. Fall and winter will show a more mature couple, and I anticipate angst in these chapters.
It’s a cool way to structure a low-key, slice-of-life romance drama. I’m already looking forward to watching something that’s pure romance without any boardroom scenes to distract me. Unless one of them is a secret chaebol. Or his robot replacement. That’s guaranteed corporate shenanigans right there.
The Third Charm will follow Friday-Saturday drama My ID Is Gangnam Beauty beginning September 28.
