DryedMangoez recaps, reviews and commentary of Korean drama series.
Single’s Inferno (솔로지옥) blends together everything a K-drama watcher loves about K-dramas and everything a reality dating show fan loves about reality dating shows. Beautiful people. Beautiful scenery. Juicy intrigue and heart-fluttering moments rivaling any romantic Korean drama. And just the right amount of reality competition to tie it all together.
So in 2021, I watched less Korean dramas that aired before this year. But I was still able to watch several. And these 12 were excellent and deserving of the spotlight.
Here are my 12 favorite pre-2021 Korean dramas I watched this year:
Here are my 20 (or more!) favorite Korean dramas of 2021!
Netflix continues to churn out solid and unique Korean drama offerings. And the latest is The Silent Sea (고요의 바다), a sci-fi mystery thriller starring Bae Doona and Gong Yoo. The premise of the eight-episode series is intriguing: an elite team is sent to retrieve a mysterious sample from the moon in the hopes of finding a solution to the severe drought and desertification of the world. Though the series itself isn’t totally out of this world (so to speak), it is nonetheless a refreshing and ultimately enjoyable experience that offers something different from the norm. Even if the series leaves a lot of potential on the table.
Kim Soo Hyun, Cha Seung Won and Kim Sung Kyu deliver captivating performances in the Coupang Play original series One Ordinary Day (어느날). Adapted from the BBC drama Criminal Justice, the series follows a young college student accused of murder and the scruffy lawyer who decides to defend him. A gripping portrait of a young man struggling to prove his innocence, One Ordinary Day is an edgy and sadly realistic look at the harsh realities of the justice system with a character-driven narrative that keeps you guessing until the very last moment.
tvN’s apocalyptic thriller Happiness (해피니스) is terrifying simply because it hits so close to home in 2021. Set in the very near future where infectious diseases have become the norm, Happiness grabs hold of some familiar narrative themes and blends them together with frighteningly relatable real world situations. As much a character piece as it is a horror-tinged thriller, Happiness makes use of a strong cast, creative direction and the stoking of real world tension for what may be the last great series of the year.
The tvN series My Roommate is a Gumiho (간 떨어지는 동거) is a light, fluffy romantic comedy. With a touch of fantasy, the series adds an ample amount of charm and whimsy to what is actually an unexpected slice of life about college and friendship. Though, as the title suggests, the main focus is on the blossoming romance between a human and the titular gumiho, the series is actually at its best when it focuses on the friendships and relationships that grow out of every day, real world situations.
Time traveling stories can get tricky. Television series involving time travel and the like usually require a certain level of commitment and faith from both the viewer and the team bringing the story to life. Because of that, these series can be either hit or miss. There’s usually no in between. Until JTBC’s Sisyphus: The Myth (시지프스: the myth) that is. This ambitious, high concept series features a strong cast and high production value. But that merely allows the series to spectacularly get lost somewhere along the way. It is almost a case of style over substance as Sisyphus is a disjointed and unbalanced series that never commits to what it wants to be. And in turn, gets its wires crossed in a way that it unfortunately is unable to untangle by the time it reaches its baffling and unsatisfying end.
Yoon Si Yoon proves once again how he’s one of the most effortlessly versatile actors today with the eight-episode Wavve drama series You Raise Me Up (유 레이즈 미 업). The series has an immediately attention-grabbing logline: a down-and-out 31-year-old studying for the civil service exam finds he may be impotent and the urologist he consults turns out to be his first love). But in familiar K-drama fashion, there’s more to the story than meets the eye. The potentially funny and raunchy first impression leads into an introspective and emotional journey for our main character that ends up being more relatable than one might have expected.
The first three seasons of OCN’s Voice delivered top-notch action and stunning performances. Between the relatively familiar crime solving mystery of season one to the darker psychological thriller of seasons two and three, Voice 4 (보이스4: 심판의 시간) finds the perfect balance between those two contrasts. Continuing the story of Lee Ha Na’s captivating Kang Kwon Joo, Voice 4 introduces us to new characters and new dangers while expanding its world in the most unexpected, yet exciting ways.