Our last drama premieres of September promise laughs and romance in unusual settings.
Miss Lee
Time slot: Wednesday & Thursday
Broadcaster: tvN
Genre: Human, workplace comedy
Episode count: 16 episodes
Reasons to watch: Desperate times call for desperate measures, and it’s understandable that a company on the brink of closure would be willing to try anything to stay open. Usually “anything” doesn’t involve promoting a low-level employee to CEO. But that’s exactly what happens in Miss Lee when Hyeri (playing the titular Miss Lee) finds herself at the top of the company pecking order overnight. Hyeri is a hapless character so when she finds herself in charge of the company, she’s determined to give her all and turn things around. Though she has resolve to spare, she doesn’t have the knowledge necessary to run an entire business on her own. As she flounders, she begs pleads with department manager Kim Sang-kyung to help her lead the company. Kim’s hesitant and jaded since he’s pretty much seen it all, but he eventually relents, which kicks off a special mentor-mentee relationship. At first, Kim Sang-kyung isn’t the only one who’s ambivalent about saving the company, but Hyeri’s unwavering devotion eventually wins people over and motivates the entire workforce to band together.
Melting Me Softly
Time slot: Saturday & Sunday
Broadcaster: tvN
Genre: Fantasy, romance, mystery
Episode count: 16 episodes
Reasons to watch: What could possibly be gained by ruining the lives of two people? That’s what Ji Chang-wook, Won Jin-ah, and I want to know. For our protagonists it’s a matter of the utmost importance but let’s rewind twenty years first. Ji plays a major variety show PD who’s hoping to add to his string of hits with his latest project: documenting two people being cryogenically frozen for 24 hours. He volunteers to take part in the experiment and Won Jin-ah joins him as the other subject in the experiment. When they finally regain consciousness, they effectively wake up in the future as twenty years have passed–but there’s no satisfying explanation of what happened the night of the experiment. What’s more, an unfortunate side effect of being frozen for so long is that they must keep their core body temperature at 33 degrees Celsius (91 F). So after coming out of a deep freeze into the future, all they have to do is stay alive, figure out their place in this new world, and solve the mystery of who (or what) caused them to stay frozen for decades. Easy peasy.