Top 10 Non-Romantic K-Dramas
No one asked for this, but if you want to experience Korean dramas without dealing with unnecessary melodrama/romance (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), here are some great ones. There’s a pretty heavy lean towards investigative/procedural shows, which feels inevitable, but each drama provides a fairly unique approach to a certain genre. Almost all of these shows are considered “well-made” dramas domestically, but don’t receive as much hype abroad, although most Korean drama watchers know some of them or have at least heard of them.
1.) Forest of Secrets/Stranger (S1, S2) — Crime, Thriller: Season One of this show was one of the best experiences of my life. It looks like a standard investigative show dealing with prosecutors and corruption, but the hype is real (if you don’t believe me, believe the New York Times, even though I really disagree with the condescending tone of their blurb, yikes). One of the best written dramas out there, and the acting and production came together to create an incredible product. I think this show is best when started blind, so just watch it. Trust me.
2.) Misaeng — Slice of life, Drama, “Healing”: Before Stranger came along, this drama was my gold standard. Again, on the surface, there’s nothing super flashy to hook you in. But the show lives and dies in its empathy, in its layered and humanistic portrayal of its characters and how every seemingly mundane moment in an average workplace is packed with every worker’s history, relationships, and emotions. It’s incredibly poignant and written with razor-sharp specificity, so it’s a great look at office culture in Korea as well. It really brings home the fact that every organization is made up of people, that institutions cannot exist without the people who exist at its core. I laughed and cried because it felt like someone out there knew intimately how these simple, ordinary moments build up our lives, how they are inseparable from who we are. The interactions between the main cast (Chief Oh!!!) are gold, and the main character has an underdog arc that is impossible not to root for.
3.) My Ahjussi/My Mister — Drama, “Healing,” Minor Suspense: Let’s make 2020 the year we normalize platonic soulmate relationships. I don’t think IU will ever beat this performance as a cynical, hurting, broken down 20 year old, and Lee Seon-kyun is so naturally in his element as a weary, rundown middle-aged office worker who proliferates decency from every pore in his body. They get drawn together as unlikely allies who connect on a human level, finding healing and strength in the support of the other. In a way, the show is a meditation on decency, on kindness, on generosity, and how we can change someone’s life and be changed in return, even for a brief, finite moment.
4.) The Guest — Crime, Horror, Fantasy: Hoo boy, I’m not great with horror but this drama took me for a ride. It starts like a joke: there’s a detective, a priest, and a psychic…and all three of them become comrades against an unspeakable evil. The show sometimes raises more questions than it answers, and the “Who the fuck is the demon” question got a bit dragged out by the latter half of the show, but who are we kidding, we watch for the platonic soulmate dynamics. Kim Dong-wook nicely balances extreme (EXTREME) trauma with a surprisingly cavalier disposition, while Kim Jae-wook is extremely pretty, extremely uptight, and extremely tortured as a young priest. Jung Eun-chae’s acting was a little green for the first few episodes, but I think she really came into her own by the end and she got to play a protector role that’s rare to see among female actors. The dynamic between the trio and the inevitable trauma-bonding that occurs between them is the core of the show, and you can equally see them all living together in domestic bliss while also appreciating the in-canon friendship.
5.) Signal — Crime, Time-Travel, Procedural: This one took Korea by storm, and was fairly popular abroad as well, and for good reason. The cases are tightly plotted and enthralling, and the larger, series long mystery of the time-traveling walkie-talkie is gripping from beginning to end. Jo Jin-woong is wonderful in this, showing the soft marshmellow core packaged in an iron will and a hardened sense of justice, and he has great chemistry with both Lee Je-hoon and Kim Hye-soo. If you must watch a procedural, start with this one.
6.) White Christmas — Mystery, Psychological Thriller: This is an older drama, but it’s a short one (only 8 episodes), and served as a launch pad for some great working actors today (Kim Woo-bin, Esom, Lee El, Lee Soo-hyuk, Kim Young-kwang, etc.). Despite being older, it has some beautiful camera work, and although the acting can be very green, the writing provides enough room for it to slide. There are some poetic moments asking questions on nature vs. nurture, how monsters are made or created, and if what kind of evil lurks within all of us, which are not necessarily questions one expects from a Korean drama, but this show asks them anyways. It’s up to the audience to find an answer.
7.) Prison Playbook — Slice of life, Drama, Humor: I personally think the writer/director duo behind the Answer Me series/Hospital Playlist are at their strongest when focusing on non-romantic dynamics, which this show really highlights due to its incredibly minimized romance angle. The show zeroes in on the idea of unlikely friendships, which the writer pursues in her other dramas (ex: the moms in Answer Me 1988) but never to this much focus. Despite the rather grim setting of a men’s prison, the show finds humor in how surreal and ridiculous its environment can get, and in how very human all of its characters are. My one gripe was how abrupt some of the exits for these characters were, but I think they were trying to go for some realism, and when the dramatic beats hit, they really hit.
8.) Dear My Friends — Drama, “Healing”: Not for the faint of heart, but worth it all the same. There’s some stunning talent among veteran actors in the Korean television industry, and this show utilizes some of the best including Go Du-shim, Na Moon-hee, and Kim Hye-ja, along with Go Hyun-jung and Jo In-sung in a minor romance plot line of their own. But the show’s real focus are the three elderly women, who ask how it might be possible to age gracefully while still dealing with the inevitable burdens of being human. No Hee-kyung’s dramas can be hit-or-miss for me, but when she’s good, she’s very, very good. She writes dramas that are generous to its characters and truly seek to understand who they are, why they are that way, and where they want to go next. No one is under utilized, everyone is given depth and understandable motivations, and the relationships, which can go from tender to fraught in a heartbeat, are so real and so wonderful and so heartbreaking.
9.) Evasive Inquiry Agency — Humor, Mystery: This is an older show from 2007, where you can find an Lee Min-ki just starting out in his career and a truly excellent Ye Ji-won, but the somewhat reduced production values are covered up by a unique script and some really wonderful performances. The premise is ridiculous, but the story has moments of unexpected poignancy and the actors really make it all work with their chemistry together. It’s a story of found family, with four unlikely idiots (truly, they share a single brain cell) solving a season-long mystery and establishing platonic bonds that are stronger than any romance that could have conceived between the leads.
10.) Joseon X-Files — Science Fiction, Procedural, Historical: I fucking love this show and I really wish it did so much better than it did, because this could have gone on for ten seasons and I would have loved every minute of it. I want to advocate for a reboot in 2020, since this is apparently the year of multi-season Korean dramas (not a new thing, but a lot more prime time shows are trying out multi-season arcs more seriously with added production values, i.e. Stranger, Hospital Playlist). The show is exactly as the title says: it’s set in Joseon, and it’s the X-Files. It could have been as wacky and dumb as it wanted to be, but it really went in the other direction and made the show take its premise seriously. It got so many things right, from Kim Gab-soo as the Pipe Smoking Man (!!!!) to adjusting the cases to parallel with real-life examples from the Annals (the Joseon history archive). My one gripe is they didn’t have as strong of a Mully/Sculder dynamic, and the male lead ends up being the rational, realistic one. But anyways, if you like Korean dramas and the X-Files, please please watch.
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