2022 Don K-xote K-drama Awards

Hello and welcome to my own little private awards show for my beloved K-dramas! I am absolutely embarrassed by how late in the year I am getting this out into the world, but my K-drama chingus told me I needed to finish it & that they would read it, so here I go!

2022 had SO MANY great shows, including some of the most compelling performances in years (if I had ended up doing a Best Actress list this year, which I decided not to in order to just get this post finished, it would be SO LONG!!!) and this year is clearly a continuation of an era of PEAK K-dramas (I personally think that from 2016 until now, South Korean shows represent some of the best television being created worldwide). It’s great to see Netflix really leading out on K-content, but Disney+, Amazon, Apple TV, and other streaming services have been purchasing & producing some quality shows as well (though shame on Disney+ for not offering many of the shows in the US that are available on their service abroad!! UPDATE: I just learned that many of these shows are being put on Hulu in the US!).

In any case, I share this list with you all in the hope that you might find some shows from the 35 dramas that I watched this year that you might be interested in checking out & hopefully would also enjoy! I also apologize for any shows that I did not like as much as you did (and hopefully you all can recommend some shows that I missed–which may have been because I couldn’t FIND them playing anywhere in the USA, like Big Mouth, The Golden Spoon, or Link: Eat, Love, Kill [a contender for worst K-drama title of all time]!! UPDATE: All of these shows are on Hulu!). Without further ado, I give you…

1. My Liberation Notes: This show was written by one of my favorite K-drama writers, Park Hae-young (Another Miss Oh, My Mister), so I was ready to love it, but then when I began watching it, it seemed like a bit of a downer. However, as I kept watching, it evolved into such a penetrating, poignant, and yet also hilarious portrait of human longing, frustration, and loneliness. I’ve liked Kim Ji-wan from shows like Fight for My Way and Lovestruck in the City, but she was a REVELATION here with a stunningly subtle and fierce depiction of a commuting office worker who is feeling an existential crisis and wants to find some kind of freedom from what her life has become, & through her honesty (partly through the “liberation diary club” she starts at her work), she ends up transforming so many people around her. Her mysterious love interest, played by Son Suk-ku (who was so great in the latter half of Be Melodramatic) was incredibly fascinating, in both his inscrutability and his subsequent opening to a possible new way of life & love. The most startling part of my enjoyment of this show came from two actors I have not really liked before: Lee Min-ki, who always seems so robotic in previous roles, but here was full of a wide range of emotions from eruptive anger to epiphanic wonder to profound self-awareness; and Lee El, who usually plays a sexy femme fatale-type, but here was both woundedly self-centered and self-deprecatingly desperate. Actually all of the actors were amazing, the script was poetic and yet still very much a portrait of unexceptional lives, and the cinematography left many images permanently burned into my memory. This is the real deal, folks.
2. Alchemy of Souls (seasons 1 & 2): This fantasy-romance is NOT my typical sort of show and I have mixed feelings about the past work of the writers, the Hong sisters (i.e. Hotel del Luna, Warm & Cozy), but this show was SO incredibly addictive–I just could not wait for the next episode to come out. Every element of showmaking was at the top of its game, but the acting (from leads to minor roles) was the most outstandingly delightful–I feel like Lee Jae-wook could power a city with his electric charm. I was one of those who was offended that the show dropped actress Jung So-min in the female lead role after we had grown so attached to her brilliantly nuanced performance as Mu-deok for 20 episodes, but then Ko Yoon-jung‘s gentle & wonder-filled performance somehow IMMEDIATELY won me over in the first episode of the second season (I did still wish So-min could have somehow re-appeared, but I think I understand the narrative logic of having another character play Jang Uk’s love). My only complaint is that it felt rushed in the last 3-4 episodes and I wished we’d had more time to see more of the bromances along with the absolutely adorable middle-aged couple portrayed by the gorgeous and feisty Oh Na-ra and the hilarious and wise Yu Jung-san. I just wanted more of everything (perhaps another season may be in the works?)!!
3. Thirty-nine: You need to know from the outset that this is a tremendously sad drama–it centers on three close female friends who find out that one of them has a terminal disease–but it really ended up being a profoundly moving and also comical account of how they (and their families and lovers) navigated this depressing reality. All three female leads were astonishingly good (Son Ye-jin, of Crash Landing on You fame, is one of my all time favorites), but Hospital Playlist‘s Jeon Mi-do really stole the show here! Please push through even if you have an aversion like I do to sad endings because this show is a joy to behold!
4. Twenty-five Twenty-One: Up until the last 2-3 episodes, I thought this would FOR SURE be my favorite show of the year. Like the other top shows, it’s perfectly cast with actors who can balance drama, comedy, and the balance of nostalgia and realism. Kim Tae-ri as Na Hee-do showed a range of emotional depth and hilarious exasperation and Nam Joo-hyuk as Baek Ye-jin’s arc went from despair to rediscovery of hope and the astonishment he has at how much he loves Hee-do, which makes these stars the standouts, but, truly, each performer had me enthralled, especially the “sis-mance” between Kim Tae-ri & Bona and the second lead romance between Bona and newcomer Choi Hyun-wook (and his platonic friendship with the brilliant Lee Joo-myoung). The Y2K era was fun to revisit, and I was grateful for the frame story set during COVID (this is one of the few shows to acknowledge that reality), but honestly, it seemed like it was setting us up to be a “healing drama” about how our relationships and community can get us through the toughest of times, but then…the ending did not seem to follow through on that logic. SPOILER: I wasn’t as traumatized by the bittersweet, unhappy ending as my wife was (I knew better than to bring up this show for almost a month!), but I honestly felt like it was not a consistent conclusion given the hard-won lessons that the main characters had learned. I will now think twice before watching a show from writer Kwon Do-Eun (who also wrote the great show Search:WWW).
5. Our Blues: I had been waiting for this show for a long time–it had been announced prior to 2020 as a show from writer No Hee-kyung named Here with an all-star cast about a group of people who work for an international non-profit organization. For whatever reason, that show never materialized, but the same all-star cast ended up in Our Blues: Lee Byung-hun, Shin Min-a, Han Ji-min, Kim Woo-bin‘s post-cancer comeback (he also happens to by Min-a’s boyfriend IRL!), and the adorable elderly actress Kim Hye-ja & everyone’s favorite eomma, Lee Jung-eun (who is playfully single here!). There were about 5 stories going on simultaneously, all interconnected, and I liked some of them more than others, but all were truly compelling and gripping, ranging from broken-hearted first love stories to parent-child reconciliation to teenage pregnancy (so happy they kept the baby!), including issues of crippling depression, an honest portrait of a sibling relationship where one sister has Down’s Syndrome (and makes some amazing art!) and the other who wants to free herself from caring for her. It’s all set on the island of Jeju, my dream vacation spot (the Asian Hawaii of sorts), so I got to vicariously live there for a time!
6. Extraordinary Attorney Woo: This show was one of those where everything was put together so perfectly (as in, they hired the TOP talent–it just looked expensively made), you just knew it was going to be a hit. Park Eun-bin is one of the most capably diverse actors in Korea today and here she captures a woman on the autistic spectrum with a deft touch (sometimes it felt like the tics were a bit on the nose, but it still seemed realistic) and it was great to see Kang Tae-oh finally emerge as a romantic lead after many gripping secondary roles. The various cases all kept my interest well and I liked the law firm staff’s banter, but honestly, the main thing that kept this from being higher on my list was just that I didn’t feel like I would ever need to re-watch this show…and that somewhat ineffable quality is something that factors highly in my appreciation of a show.
7. Love All Play: This was a show that I ended up buying after seeing some clips of it on Reels & YouTube and discovering that even though Disney+ had produced the show, it was not available to stream in the US (c’mon, Mickey!). I’m not a sports fan at all, but I could tell that the aching romance between players on a badminton team played by two of my favorite up-and-coming performers, Park Ju-hyun (outstanding in Extracurricular) & Chae Jong-hyup (Nevertheless‘s “potato boy”) was going to be worth it & I can tell you IT WAS ADORABLE!! My wife and I had a blast watching it together and she’s now re-watching it with my daughter (who just happens to be getting really into badminton!). I loved the team members and the minor story arcs a lot as well. If any local friends want to borrow it, just let me know!
8. Cheer Up: Okay, so I said I don’t like sports, therefore THIS cheerleading (and it’s different than American cheerleading) show seemed like a very unlikely contender to end up on my top 10 list (and, TBH, the cheerleading parts WERE a bit tiresome & weird to me) and there was a thriller kind of mystery happening in the background which never worked for me, but the story of a poor young woman trying to pay her way through college while discovering new friendships and love just totally grabbed me. The MAIN reason it all worked is that actress Han Ji-hyun just OWNED the screen with her comic skills (amazing facial expressions), unexpected charm, and unstoppable determination–she carried this whole show (though there were many appealing actors on the cast as well). I’d not watched any seasons of The Penthouse, so I thought she was a debut actress, but apparently she was really evil in that show!
9. Bulgasal: Immortal Souls: This was one of those DARK fantasy shows with a good amount of gore involving supernatural monsters, but the main storyline (SPOILER: ancient enemies fall in love) was gripping and intense. The two leads, Lee Jin-uk (who’s been in many shows, just not many I’ve seen other than Sweet Home) and Kwon Na-ra (who’s ALWAYS amazing, but was so incredible in My Mister & Itaewon Class) have this wonderfully twisted chemistry, as a seemingly innocent woman who’s always been on the run gets taken in by the immortal who she thinks killed her twin sister (and whose younger sister seems to have a “past life” connection to the man as well). I was getting some fun Goblin vibes when these three and a high school student all live together, but for the most part, it is pretty violent and tragic. Happy ending? Kind of!
10. The Sound of Magic: When I found out this was a kind of musical, I almost didn’t watch it, but I’m so glad I did. Ji Chang-wook is wonderfully engaging as usual and the adorable Hwang In-yeop lights up the screen even as the (sort of) bad guy, but again, a new female lead named Choi Sung-eun carried this whole show with the gravity and longing of her impoverished and difficult journey to believe that she can ever find joy again. When it happens, you will need some tissue. So good!
11. Summer Strike: This was the show where two introverts fall in love in the countryside (or a town in the country), so there are a lot of silent glances as the two leads slowly open up to one another, but Seol Hyun (whom I’d never seen in a show before but is a 2nd generation K-pop idol apparently) totally had me hooked with her performance as a girl quitting her job in the city to rediscover herself by hanging out in the library all the time–sounds like heaven. I had a bit harder time swallowing Im Si-wan as the male lead (maybe due to his weird haircut?) but a lot of people loved him in this show, so maybe it’s just me. It was giving Little Forest vibes (for those who’ve seen that show).
12. Dear.M: This was the show whose airing got delayed for about a year because of bullying allegations against the main actress, Park Hye-soo, which turned out to be false (this is one thing that kind of drives me crazy about Korean culture–you think American cancel culture is bad, but we don’t tend to accept stories about people’s middle school behavior as career-ending, especially when it turns out to be false). In the end, I thought it was a great college drama focusing on two sets of roommates who fall in and out of love with each other. The cast includes some wonderful up and coming performances (one of whom is a member of the boy group NCT).
13. Sh**ting Stars: My daughter & I couldn’t help but think that the first word was a vulgar term (dark humor), but Weightlifting Fairy Lee Sung-kyung definitely shone brightly again in this role as an employee at an acting agency, and her male lead, Kim Young-dae (also a break-out star from The Penthouse). There were some fun side stories with engaging performances, but, like Cheer Up, it had a psychopath storyline that felt unnecessary to me and it did drag a bit. But I still thought it was a great watch!
14. Love is for Suckers: Choi Si-wan is one of my favorite Korean actors–ever since I first saw him in She Was Pretty, I’ve thought that he has the effortless charm and elegance of a Cary Grant–and Lee Da-hee is someone I absolutely adore and admire from her great work in The Beauty Inside and Search:WWW, so putting them together seems like a recipe for success & this show about long time friends pondering their own romantic potential had many moments of greatness, but the writing was not so great and the amount of time spent on the romance-based reality show-within-the-show was a bit of a slog (though the in-show love interest for Si-wan, played by Lee Ju-yeon, was a gentle and winsome revelation!). I’ll say that I wanted to love this show a lot more than I actually did, but my expectations may simply have simply been too high!
15. Once upon a Small Town: There was absolutely nothing really wrong with this show–it was a charmer from beginning to end, but it also felt too short and like it didn’t really have any bite to it, but if you are looking for a sweet show about childhood friends being reunited in a rural setting (involving a lot of large animal veterinarian work), then this is for you. I loved the male lead in School 2021 and he is doing a fine job here, but Red Velvet’s Joy is the pure ray of sunshine that lights up this show. (If you’ve never watched Tempted/The Great Seducer, Joy magnificently plays the innocent victim of a revenge-fueled seduction–based on the Dangerous Liaisons storyline–where the playboy ends up falling in love with her: superb!)

SO that’s all I have for 2022. (CORRECTION: I forgot to add my favorite short dramas from the year, including Soundtrack #1 (so great), Alice, the Final Weapon (fascinating but oh so violent), and New Love Playlist (which was kind of a low budget show but was the first show I have seen that tackled life at university during COVID lockdown!).

I usually talk a bit of crap about the shows I didn’t like or dropped so you have been saved from those rants (thought Fanletter, Please was just horrid). I will say that I’m sad that I didn’t like a few shows as much as others did (Reborn Rich, Business Proposal, Today’s Webtoon, Little Women, etc.) and there was one show I was SO SAD I didn’t like (Why Her? with my favorite actress Seo Hyun-jin). There were a few REALLY WELL MADE Netflix shows that were just far too dark (Glitch) or sexual (Somebody). There were also some shows I liked but just didn’t quite pull me in (If You Wish Upon Me, May I Help You?) and others that were good but also a bit overplayed (All of Us Are Dead). I also enjoyed watching, but somehow didn’t love Forecasting Love & Weather with the always great Park Min-young and hot guy Song Kang.

2022 had many great shows that will probably be watched again at some point in the future, but I’ve got to get back to catching up with my 2023 K-dramas and working on the novel I’m writing, Don K-xote, which inspired my blog name!