Another year, another KBS Drama Special series. I’m not usually a fan of drama shorts in general, but I’ll be tuning into the one-episode stories that make up this year’s string of specials over on KBS, which promises ten different “romances.” We have two short teasers out for the first half of the series, listed below, and the glimpses we get have me pretty excited at the amount of talent KBS has managed to recruit this year.
If We Were a Season: This is going to be so cute, I just know it. Jang Dong-yoon (School 2017), Chae Soo-bin (Strongest Deliveryman), and Jinyoung (Moonlight Drawn By Clouds) star in a high-school love triangle described as a “youth melo,” though I do have to wonder whether the melo part is just in the characters’ heads. ‘Cause I cracked up when Jang Dong-yoon yells, “If we really are just friends…” with Chae Soo-bin responding, equally serious, “I don’t know, you bastard,” and then we cut to a teacher telling them to shut up and raise their arms as we see them kneeling on the floor in punishment mode. Lol, that school bell at the end.
You’re Closer Than I Think: Lee Sang-yub (This Week, My Wife Will Have an Affair) and Kim So-eun (Our Gap-soon) will costar in a mystery melodrama centering around a bride who leaves her would-be husband at the altar and takes off on the honeymoon solo, leaving just a single text message. Her jilted groom and the audience will find out more sides to the runaway bride, played by Kim So-eun, through the hints she’s left behind. When not being abandoned at the altar, Lee Sang-yub’s character is a secondhand bookstore owner and the radio DJ of his own station.
Let Us Meet, Joo-oh: Set in Gyeongseong—the old name for modern-day Seoul—during the Japanese occupation, this period rom-com gives a contemporary narrative an old-school spin. Jo Boa (The Man Living in Our House) stars as a country bumpkin desperate to marry a “modern man” with all of the right qualifications, and goes to a matchmaking service to make it happen. Sohn Ho-joon (Blow Breeze) plays her “couple manager” who attempts to fulfill her wishes, though it looks like he has his work cut out for him, since we see him in the teaser try to relate to his client that “in this era, people only meet others within their rank.” Lol, did he really try to set her up with a Taoist monk? Can’t wait to see more of the blind date hijinks in early 20th-century Korea!
Waltzing Alone: We take our setting back to the modern-day for this drama special, with two youths in a long-term relationship (8 years!!) who encounter tensions of break-up proportions when they both apply to the same company. Moon Ga-young (Live Up to Your Name) will play one-half of the troubled couple who initially fell in love in a waltz class. There’s nothing quite as topical as youth unemployment, especially in Korea at the moment, so here’s to hoping this couple finds a way to get through this intact.
Madame Jung’s Last Week: And last, but certainly not least, we have a part dark comedy, part heist story about a bar owner and an abused child joining forces to maintain possession of a money bag they pick up serendipitously. Ra Mi-ran (Laurel Tree Tailors) plays the bar hostess and adorable child actress Shin Rin-ah (Defendant) will play her partner-in-crime, a child abused by her stepfather and used as a money-making tool by her mother. They sound like the most reluctant, adorable couple ever. I’m rooting for their “romance” the most out of all of these stories, to be honest.
All in all, it’s a pretty great lineup of stories and casts. The schedule for the rest of the specials hasn’t been released yet and the descriptions above aren’t in any particular order, but If We Were a Season will kick start the 2017 KBS Drama Specials this coming Sunday, September 3.
