K-Drama

Typhoon Family is the quintessential example of a show with very familiar constituent parts – a real-life period of turbulent history, a wayward son forced to grow up at pace, a burgeoning romance, and so on – that feels fresh and distinct through its basic underlying quality.

Well, we’re in the ‘90s, of that there can be no doubt. The whole aesthetic of Typhoon Family reflects the period in which it’s set, but it’s not all in service of chintzy nostalgia.

Don’t let me keep you in suspense. Yes, Bon Appetit, Your Majesty has the happy ending everyone wanted. Episode 12 isn’t about historical realism or...

It’s Episode 11, aka the penultimate instalment of Bon Appetit, Your Majesty, and finally, the K-Drama is starting to act like a show with some pretty significant threads to wrap up that can’t afford to waste three episodes on a cooking contest.

For a while now, I’ve been complaining about Bon Appetit, Your Majesty wasting time on this damn cooking competition.

And here I was, complaining about how long it took Bon Appetit, Your Majesty to finally get around to the cooking competition.

I’ll be the first to admit that I thought a cooking competition was a good idea for Bon Appetit, Your Majesty. It might still be. We wouldn’t know, since it still hasn’t happened yet.

As expected, Episode 6 of Bon Appetit, Your Majesty revolves around Ji-young rising up to defend Joseon’s reputation in front of the Ming Dynasty.

I’ve been saying all throughout Beyond the Bar that Seok-hoon and Hyo-min work better as colleagues than as a potential couple, so you can imagine...

You can tell we’re approaching the end of Beyond the Bar because we’re getting into the territory of needlessly long episodes.

Bon Appetit, Your Majesty has been pretty knockabout so far, but the margins have always contained a much more serious show.

How long is too long? I ask because Bon Appetit, Your Majesty runs for nearly 90 minutes every episode, and it feels like the story is moving slowly to accommodate that in Episodes 3 & 4.

Twelve leaves us with a lot of questions after Episode 4. On some level, this isn’t a terrible thing, since it wouldn’t do for a show to give all of its secrets away out of the gate.

Once again I’m confronted with the possibility that Beyond the Bar might be responding to these recaps directly.

Good TV conflict always creates the impression that the villains have the upper hand, only for the heroes to rally and save the day in the end, but I do wonder if Twelve might be going a bit far with it.

It took until Episode 9, but Beyond the Bar fiddles with its structure a little bit here, splitting its time between two cases, one of which isn’t entirely resolved by the end.

I struggle to think of a TV show in recent years that has charmed and delighted me quite as much as The Winning Try.

Is someone working on Beyond the Bar reading these recaps? It feels like it sometimes.

There’s something quite charming and simplistic about the mythological setup of Twelve, the anticipated Disney+ K-Drama based on zodiac signs about a dozen angels living among the humans of Korea and protecting them from an ancient evil.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think Beyond the Bar works better without a romantic component between the leads.