Favourites of 2013

I’m sorry to inflict yet another best-of list on you but I figured it would be good for my swiss cheese memory to jot these down for posterity.

It’s been a year of many firsts: my first year of K-drama watching, of blogging, of tumblr-ing (is that a word?), and of meeting a lovely community of fellow drama obsessives (that means you!) which has been totally awesome.

I wish everyone lots of love, happiness and many more good dramas in 2014!

Favourites

These worked for me in all the ways that matter–heart, story, substance and execution–and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend every one of them. In no particular order:

Review: Dating Agency: Cyrano (2013, tVN)

Premise: An ex-theater director finds use for his dramatic skills by playing cupid in a dating agency. When a new recruit shakes up the workplace, he has to juggle his growing feelings for her, his lovelorn clients, and his past traumas.

Dating Agency: Cyrano is a zippy, enjoyable rom-com that does everything right from the start. It’s dating agency setting is a premise made in rom-com heaven, and the show fully exploits it with just the right amount of cute, heart, comedy and wit. It’s light-hearted, breezy episodic nature  stops it from being bonafide drama crack however, but its many charms will completely win you over.

Look who showed up on Dating Agency Cyrano?

Why, it’s Gong Yoo!… in a really unflattering shade of brown. Sigh.  

 

I’d been wavering on my initial interest in this drama as its case-of-the-week format was wearing thin with no sign of the drama’s core conflicts deepening or gaining any sort of momentum. But news of Gong Yoo’s guesting did make me tune in eagerly.