We’ve got a varied set of premieres this week in dramaland, with everything from romance to murder mystery to prison yard revenge. Seriously though, why can’t we seem to escape prison this season? Did all the stations go in on a group rate to build that one prison set, and now they have to get their money’s worth? It would explain a lot.
Radio Romance
Time slot: Monday & Tuesday
Broadcaster: KBS
Genre: Romance
Episode count: 16
Reasons to watch: I’m looking forward to the sunny, upbeat vibe of Radio Romance, which isn’t a romantic comedy, but still seems plenty sweet. It’s about the goings on at a radio show and a romance that blossoms between the DJ and the writer, which is simple but more appealing to me than the traditional workplace drama. Maybe I just find radio romantic.
Kim So-hyun stars as the junior writer of a healing radio talk show who lives for radio but can’t actually write very well, and Yoon Doo-joon plays a top star who’s paralyzed without a script, but somehow gets roped into being the host of a live radio show where nothing goes according to plan. The scriptwriter is new and PD Moon Jun-ha has done some drama specials (Hair Show, Pianist), so that’s not much to go on. The star power is the main draw here, so the real question will be how the chemistry fares between Yoon Doo-joon and Kim So-hyun, and whether it’ll be enough to overcome our initial worries about the pairing.
Cross
Time slot: Monday & Tuesday
Broadcaster: tvN
Genre: Medical revenge thriller
Episode count: 16
Reasons to watch: This won’t be your average medical drama, even though it IS about a bunch of surgeons, and Go Kyung-pyo even plays a geeeeeenius doctor with enhanced left brain capacity (of course he does). It’s actually a revenge thriller with an unusual premise, about a man who devises an elaborate plan to become a prison surgeon so that he can take revenge on the man who killed his father. Apparently Go Kyung-pyo’s character thinks medical school is where you learn to kill people, because he hones his skills in order to kill in the slowest, most painful way.
The cast includes Jo Jae-hyun and Jeon So-min as a father-daughter pair who work in the hospital’s organ transplant ward, who must be part of the humanizing influence on Go Kyung-pyo that makes him waver. The show’s tagline is super dramatic but captures the dilemma perfectly: “Good and evil, life and death, revenge and salvation. What choice will the one holding the scalpel make?” PD Shin Yong-hwi of OCN’s Tunnel is at the helm, and screenwriter Choi Min-seok of My Brilliant Life and Blind is making his drama debut, so I think we can expect heart-pounding thrills.
Misty
Time slot: Friday & Saturday
Broadcaster: JTBC
Genre: Mystery melodrama
Episode count: 16
Reasons to watch: It’s Kim Nam-joo’s drama comeback six years after a string of hits (You Who Rolled in Unexpectedly, Queen of Reversals, Queen of Housewives), so she’s definitely the big draw and the reason to watch. She headlines Misty as the nation’s top news anchor, a poised and ambitious woman who is never satisfied with what she has and is always hungry to achieve more. One day a shocking murder scandal hits the news, and she’s one of three main suspects in the case. This is starting to sound a lot like Return…
She’ll be defended by her prosecutor-turned-public-defender husband, played by Ji Jin-hee, and the drama is as much about their tumultuous relationship and what their marriage goes through as it is about the murder mystery. The script comes from a new writer, so we don’t know what to expect there, but PD Mo Wan-il of Beautiful Mind and Sirius should deliver on the moody mystery. And on a shallow note, Kim Nam-joo and Ji Jin-hee make the most gorgeous couple. What do you suppose she eats? Unicorn hooves?