Flower of Evil (2020) begins with an intriguing scene (it is featured in the MVs so it’s hardly a spoiler). A man has both his hands tied to a bar at the bottom of a pool and the water has risen to just above his head. He is struggling to breathe and he is knocking on Death’s door. Before long a woman swims to him and tries to frantically untie him. Who is he? Who is she? How did he land up in that dire situation? The first episode will answer some of the questions and provide even more. Chances are you will be in for the long haul because the white-knuckled plot will grab you and like me, you will invite the storyteller to do his worst.

One could easily glean from the first episode that Baek Hee Sung (Lee Joon-gi) is a man with a dark past and when I say dark I mean it involves serial killing. At this point, he has changed his identity and somehow gets a new lease of life with a beautiful wife Cha Ji-won (Moon Chae-won) who is a police detective. They have a precarious daughter whom they dote on. However, the dream is shattered when a friend from his past Kim Moo-jin (Seo Hyun-woo) who is now a journalist recognises him.

The first episode is superbly done. The way it efficiently lays down the principal characters and their motivations is brilliant. The cross-cutting between the husband and the wife, each scene showcasing the depravity of the man and the intelligence of the woman as she solves a crime that has many twists, is engrossing. The foundation is effectively laid but in my mind this felt like a 2-hour movie. However, I was willing to be proven wrong.

So very wrong was I who thought the story doesn’t have the range for sixteen 70-minute episodes. The electrifying plot uses the long format well, constantly forcing you to change your feelings about the two main leads. The nastily tangled storyline knows when to dole out crucial information and knows when to withhold them. You can liken this clever exercise to handing out jigsaw pieces to you but never giving you the whole picture to see how it all fits. The whole thing progresses at a pace that leaves one breathless and wanting more, but also leaves room for thought. For someone who eats thrillers like burgers, I must confess I was totally caught surprised a number of times. This is also not something you watch while checking your social media because you will miss something important.

Flower of Evil isn’t high art; it’s pure escapist entertainment with enough storytelling smarts to make you willingly look past the blatant implausibility even when it drifts into the absurd.

For this reviewer, there are other elements that make this series climb above the run-of-the-mill thrillers that pour out of the Kdrama factory. One, how the female protagonist is painted is not as a long suffering wife who will stand by her husband even if he is potentially a serial killer. Detective Cha is a realist and only believes in things she can see. She is not blinded by her love for her husband and will make him eat a bullet if her life is threatened. Two, it has the ability to take potentially stereotypical roles and make them full people. For instance, the police are not represented by only one competent protagonist and all the rest are bumbling idiots. I find the secondary character of veteran Detective Choi Jae-sub (Choi Young-joon) a refreshing one and he is Detective Cha’s equal. Lastly, the plot is absolutely unpredictable, managing to subvert my expectations at every twist and turn, and if that’s not the hallmark of a good drama series, I don’t know what is.

There were so many Kdrama series like Itaewon Class, The World of the Married and The Uncanny Counter that failed to nail the elusive ending, but not quite so with this one. Essentially, it ends in episode 15 with a variation on the one in David Fincher’s Se7en (1995) and quite satisfyingly. But like many Kdramas, Flower of Evil had to play the melodrama card in episode 16. It was lumpy and seemed to be limping towards the finishing line. I told myself no way it is going to make me cry, but it did. You got to hand it to the Koreans, they sure know how to play this trick and my tears were earned.

Flower of Evil is a clever title with an oxymoronic twirl. It essentially opines that underneath the facade of the characters hides a deadly secret. This series also takes the study of a husband and wife relationship to a whole new level. With its stellar acting, electric pacing and twists galore, Flower of Evil is a white-hot nail-biter of a series. This one will take 1120 minutes from you just like.

Written by Daniel Chiam

The missus and I must be the only Korean drama aficionados that have not seen this massive hit drama. Let’s put it in context for you – Goblin currently lies at #239 on IMDb’s list of Top Rated TV Shows. I checked, it is the ONLY Korean drama series on the illustrious list. Yes, Crash Landing On You isn’t there, I am sorry 😬

Since the series exploded on the small screen, we have heard so many positive things about it from friends, but none was more persuasive than my niece who went to most of the filming locations during her exchange program in Korea. She even saw the cast and crew filming episode 12-13 at the BBQ restaurant. The series also heralded a cultural phenomenon with fans picking up the fashion trend portrayed in the series and Korea’s tourism numbers rocketed up. While the world went Goblin nuts, we remained oblivious to it, but we finally check it out, all thanks to this lockdown.

Kim Shin (Gong Yoo) a decorated military general from the Goryeo Dynasty is framed as a traitor and killed by his master, the young King. Years after his death, he is cursed by the almighty to stay immortal forever and endure the pain of seeing his loved ones die as a punishment to the beastly kills he committed in the wars to protect his country. He becomes an immortal goblin, helping people with his powers and being a kind man in spite of his grievous past. The only way to put an end to his immortality is the Goblin’s bride, whose aid in pulling out the sword embedded in his chest will culminate his painful immortality. Ji Eun-Tak (Kim Go-Eun) is a bubbly high school student who remains cheerful and hopeful despite her tragic life. She summons the goblin by chance and their fates begin to entwine. Goblin’s nephew Yoo Deok-Hwa (Yook Sung-Jae) leases the Goblin’s house to a grim reaper (Lee Dong-Wook) and the two end up living under the same roof. In the fray is also Sunny (Yoo In-Na), a charismatic young lady who runs a chicken shop in which Ji Eun-Tak works as a part-timer. As the lives of Kim Shin, the grim reaper, Ji Eun-Tak and Sunny interweave, a deeper story unfolds as they are not just strangers who met by chance but people with deep-rooted relations.

I plucked the synopsis from Wikipedia. It’s for the 1% in the world who have never heard of Goblin 😊 Here comes my take…

The Koreans are so good with these epic fantasy romance dramas. They know the inherent conceit is to create an impossible romance. By that I mean the man and woman will find it impossible to be together, but yet every atom in their body will drive them towards each other. I have been schooled in this mantra of Korean romance having seen so many of the great ones. In Hotel Del Luna and Crash Landing On You, both man and woman have everything to lose if they wish to be together, likewise in Goblin. If Eun-Tak pulls the sword out, Kim Shin ceases to exist. If she doesn’t do it, she will be in constant danger.

The impossible romance only works if the couple is painted so believably, their chemistry so palpable, their love so powerful that we will hope with our entire being that they find their happiness. Initially, I had some trouble believing the stuff thrown at me. Kim Shin is more than 900 years old trapped in a 30+(?) body, while Eun-Tak is a 19-year-old high schooler. The height discrepancy is the gap of the wealth divide of any country. Thankfully, they are on the same maturity level but Eun-Tak does have to teach him a few things about love. The whole thing spelt illicit to me. Maybe it’s because I am a teacher so this looked to me like a sleazy romance between a teacher and his junior college student. But dammit… with every episode and every ethereal moment I bought into it, hook, line and sinker.

Eun-Tak’s Cinderella-esque underpinnings aside, what eventually endeared me towards her is her spunkiness. Being born into poverty doesn’t limit her. She grabs life by its horns and forge something for herself, staying steadfast to her beliefs. She plays a 19-year-old girl with aplomb. The world through her eyes is a wondrous one. She isn’t awestruck (at least to me) by the wealthy Kim Shin and will get pissed at him and is not afraid to speak her mind. I don’t find her stunningly pretty like the dime in a dozen actresses in Kdramas, but her confidence and feistiness is a breath of fresh air.

In any healthy relationship, each person will see the world through the other’s eyes and evolve to become a better person. Eun-Tak’s presence changes a quiet and regal Kim Shin to someone who is able to see the beauty and funny in life. Oh man… if I live to be more than 900 in a forever young 30+ body I will surely gain some smarts and enjoy my time on earth. I am not going to be an angry Wolverine staying pissed at the world all the time.

The first 8 episodes had me scratching my head a fair bit. It just wasn’t compelling stuff and the dialogue is frivolous. As much as I find it a little underwhelming, I was still engaged because of the fascinating back stories, gorgeous cinematography and the chemistry of the characters. I particularly enjoyed the bromance between goblin and the nameless grim reaper. The writers really milked the possibilities and drew out the juxtapositions between two supernatural beings. Oh… gorgeously beautiful people demand the most beautiful shots. The photography is amazing. You just need to freeze-frame any shot with your eyes closed and then open your eyes and see a poster shot. The bokeh shots, the slo-mo, the scenery… beautiful. In goblin’s mansion, the furniture and home decor are things of wonder. My eyes will constantly wander to the wardrobe, kitchen ware and shelves. Nothing, not even a light fixture, is out of place and the whole mansion and all its amazing rooms is like one of the man-made wonders of planet earth, I kid you not.

From episode 9 onwards, Goblin goes on a different route, things are more urgent, the frivolity disappears like wisps of smoke and in comes an urgency that builds and builds to a crescendo. Suddenly, you will realise the first 8 episodes are some clever expositional passages disguised as hilarity and absurd situations. Suddenly, you will realise all the characters are linked in grandiose ways and they have been placed on a chessboard by God to see how it all plays out. Think Job in the bible and you get what I mean. What’s also clever about it is Goblin doesn’t rely on a negative force to retard the principals’ arcs in the first half of the series. From episode 9 onwards, villainy arrives in all its evil and I was all in. I could map out the ending but that ending in my head came in episode 13 and I had no idea what they were going to do with the last 3 episodes. The last 3 episodes have some of the best falling action ever that culminates in a prolonged bittersweet moment that brought on a heartache like no other. The last 2 episodes can practically be a movie about having amnesia and learning to fall in love again.

Goblin has inspired moments of writing and every element coalesced into an organic whole that is effective and affective. I think it’s not far-fetched to say it’s art. It’s definitely great television, period. Sure, I can tell you a few things that are off but taken as a whole, this feels like a phenomenon where all the stars aligned and something transcendent happened. This one definitely laid down a marker for the rest of Kdrama-dom to pull up their socks. I can safely tell you with all my heart that Hotel Del Luna and Crash Landing On You won’t have happened if it isn’t for Goblin.

Written by Daniel Chiam

I am of the opinion that there are only a few times in your lifetime when your mind will be at its crystal clearest. Just for a few seconds, your consciousness wouldn’t be bombarded by 101 thoughts; only one singular thought screams at you and you will know exactly what you need to do. It could be you staring down a 100-metre sprint from the starting point; it could be you staring at a car as yours careened towards it, wondering why you had rushed the red light; it could be you in a doctor’s office, waiting anxiously for the test results as you scan every minutiae on the doctor’s face for positive news. Some years ago, in the wee hours of a hospital’s Accident and Emergency room, a doctor told me I needed immediate surgery on my right eye. My girlfriend was holding my hand at that moment and later she would tell me my hand turned cold and my face was drained of colour the moment the doctor related the news.

There are lots of these keenly observed scenes in Hospital Playlist, one which was particularly moving – a man, surrounded by his immediate family, was told he is in dire need of a liver operation; everybody turns to the wife and say she is the ideal donor, she weeps but the reason is not immediately clear. Nothing escapes the doctor’s eyes as he dismisses all the rest of family members except for the wife. Interestingly, writer Lee Woo-Jung and director Shin Won-Ho, are seasoned hands at the way they drop revelations. After being schooled by them in the excellent series Reply 1988 (2015), I know they will do a ABCE and drop the D somewhere further on in the episode. By that point, the audience would have been thoroughly engaged and craving for that elusive D to be revealed, and when it comes, it comes like a tidal wave of feels.

Hospital Playlist is the umpteenth drama series using a hospital as the setting. Through the years I have seen so many – E.R., Chicago Hope, Grey’s Anatomy and that’s just the American ones. There are certain genre tropes that these hospital dramas adhere to, like using the urgent life-and-death everyday situations to contrast the emotional entanglements and couplings of the medical staff is practically carved in stone. So it came as a huge surprise that Hospital Playlist doesn’t do the usual tricks. In fact, its coolest trick is to do no tricks at all. If Hospital Playlist were food, it would be a cynic’s full-on chocolate binge.

The story follows five friends who met in college and now work at the same hospital. Chae Song-Hwa is the only belle in the ensemble and she is a brain surgeon; Lee Ik-Jun (Jo Jung-Suk) is a gastric surgeon and the funny one. Then there is Kim Jun-Wan (Jung Kyung-Ho), a heart surgeon and the seemingly coldest one among them, while Ahn Jeong-Won (Yoo Yeon-Seok) is a caring paediatric surgeon whose mood swings according to how his young patients are healing. Rounding up the close-knit quintet is Yang Seok-Hyeong (Kim Dae-Myung), an obstetrician who cares deeply about his variety shows and mother. After a hard day’s work, they will meet for meals and sometimes unwind through playing together in a band.

This is not a plot-driven series. The story follows the doctors as they solve medical problems as their daily activities intersect with other resident doctors and staff. There is no villainy, no love triangles, no darkest before the dawn moments and get this… their friendship is never tested at all. In fact, it doesn’t even go down the road of protracted will-they-or-won’t-they romantic agony until the second half of the series. It took me a while to get the laid back appeal because I was too entrenched in how most stories are usually told. The vibe here is so natural and slice of a surgeon’s life as they interweave with many characters. In lesser hands, it would quickly become episodic but it never becomes that and neither does it slip into sappiness and misused sentimentality. It wisely retains just enough of the pain and disappointment of real life to temper with its peaceful, easy feeling of a vibe. This is a breath of fresh air.

The performances never become saccharine with characters’ feelings running hot and cold, capably radiating emotions that you can’t help but seesaw back and forth along with them. Many of the keenly observed human behaviour are spot-on. Have you ever gone to your medical appointment punctually but had to wait way past your appointed time and as each minute crawled by your frustration rose up by notches? There is a scene just like this in the last episode and the conclusion of that storyline put a stone in my heart and a hitch in my breath. I think I will never be flustered anymore while waiting to see the doctor after this episode.

There is much joy to be had with Hospital Playlist and my favourite scenes are seeing the friends having a meal, while poking fun at each other and rushing to complete each other’s sentences, and most definitely the scenes of them jamming. All the good shows have a metaphor embedded in the storyline, them having an amazing time jamming together is a sublime metaphor. I have no idea if they can actually play musical instruments, but they are very convincing in those lovely scenes. They could have fooled me and their love for each other is the real deal. How else can you make music so perfectly – every instrument coming together in the perfect timing and never undercutting another, supporting one and another. Their friendship is what fuels them and us. How I wished I had friends like these.
A hospital is never a nice place to visit and somebody’s music playlist is always subjective, but Hospital Playlist is one hospital you need to check in for an enjoyable time and it has a playlist that will worm its way into your heart. Bring on season 2.

Written by Daniel Chiam

Mirzapur is no Paatal Lok and it doesn’t even come close to the Gangs of Wasseypur, but it is compulsively watchable because it is a wicked joy to see scumbags get their just deserts. It all begins at a wedding…

The iron-fisted Akhandanand Tripathi (Pankaj Tripathi) is a millionaire carpet exporter and the mafia don of Mirzapur. His son, Munna (Divyendu Sharma), is an unworthy, power-hungry heir who will stop at nothing to inherit his father’s legacy. An incident at a wedding procession forces him to cross paths with Ramakant Pandit (Rajesh Tailang), an upstanding lawyer, and his sons, Guddu (Ali Fazal) and Bablu (Vikrant Massey). It snowballs into a game of ambition, power and greed that threatens the fabric of this lawless city.

Ah yes… the wedding… it’s a shocker. It isn’t what happened that made it a shocker but the way it was brushed off that is scary, kind of like you just squashed a mosquito in the midst of sucking your blood and you just flicked it away without a smidgen of thought. It immediately dawned on me that in the city of Mirzapur, a gun in hand is worth two in the glove compartment. This one takes the lawless Wild West to a whole different level. Forget about the police… the men at the top are fed so much money that they give free rein to the gangsters.

You know how you wake up every morning and look at the bills you have to pay, and you wonder “only rich people don’t have problems like these”. Mirzapur will affirm in you that the rich and powerful have a different set of problems. They too worry about money like “how do I drive up the sales of homemade guns and heroin?”. They are also concerned who is encroaching into their business, who is not fearful of them and the man at the top of the food chain also has an erectile dysfunction problem, so much so that his wife, Beena (Rasika Dungal), has to search for sexual pleasure through a manservant. So yes… this is a dysfunctional family saga and I rub my hands in glee when the don will finally realise the baby is not his. 

The flow of the narrative is clunky and sometimes characters are inserted to serve a lone purpose, some for titillation, some for shocking deaths. Talking about deaths, this one borrows from Game of Thrones’ blueprint in laying out shocking deaths. The ending of S1 certainly dropped my heart to the floor. I went through a gamut of feelings and I was all in for S2. Oh… before I forget, to possibly survive a gun pointed at your head, pray you know how to recite the ABC in Hindi and definitely Urdu.

Characters are the fabric of good storytelling and here they are not drawn with satisfaction. Character motivations are never consistent and don’t adhere to real life scenarios. Munna is slapped by a lust-bucket of a politician and the don says “nobody slaps my son in public” and you know the dude is going to get a knife in his back. Then when Munna, the good-for-nothing, gets wronged grievously by Bablu and Guddu, the brothers get to work for the don and get all sorts of perks like guns and motorcycles. A few episodes later, the don even gives them the lowdown on his shady business and entrusts them with huge responsibilities. It made no sense to me.

What does make sense to me is seeing the theme of how power corrupts even the righteous flourish. The acting is all round excellent and the actors give their all, and the devilish joy they have in spouting the spot-on dialogue is evident. 

Mirzapur isn’t a top-tier series but it is an absolutely solid escapist entertainment into the world of gangsters in a far-flung lawless city in India. I dare you to not laugh at the dude who has a torchlight pushed to the back of his throat as he runs for his life, and Guddu becomes a temporary dentist. 

While watching Mirzapur, I found out that Bosch has a new season of good ole detective work. It only took us 3 binge sessions to get through this and it’s as good as ever.

There’s a workman-like ethic to Bosch in the way the investigation unfolds. It is authentically portrayed – the hard and meticulous work is evident. None of that stupid driving music to announce an action scene or a moment of epiphany. Music is used in a diegetic manner to smooth out edits and most of the time you wouldn’t be aware of it, so much so that when Bosch plays his jazz, like Art Pepper’s Patricia, you hear it like a cool experience. 

I love Michael Connelly’s books on Bosch. Connelly understands cop and drama. He knows the pain and sorrow that walk in tandem to the relentless search for justice. The toil is palpable but never cliché. In Maddie, Bosch’s daughter, you can see the dynamics in play. She is her father’s daughter, a chip of the old block. I love how they bounce off ideas with each other and their closeness. There is absolutely no doubt they would take a bullet for each other. The father-daughter angle is well-handled, none of that hue and cry crap that underscores so many other dramas. 

Each season takes all the principal characters to a new place and I am glad this season gives Jerry the limelight in a case that will tear him apart from the inside out. I love the Crate and Barrel’s stories. Their chasing criminals days may be over, but you can never take the police out of them. 

This season borrows from Connelly’s The Overlook and Dark Sacred Night, and it is the best season yet. If you are a fan of the novels or Bosch, the TV series, you would watch this no matter what I wrote. If you have never seen this, know that this is a shining example of great police procedural storytelling. Heck! If I am not a teacher, I want to be a detective like Bosch.

Written by Daniel Chiam

I love December weather. The sun is always hiding behind a parade of dark clouds, the temperature drops to the middle 20s and it’s the one time in a year you won’t look out of sorts in a sweater. When it is this time of the year, I like to snuggle in front of my fireplace. Of course, no true blue Singaporean has a fireplace because it would look like the dumbest thing ever. My “fireplace” is my telly and Amazon Prime’s anthology series Modern Love is the perfect “fire” as this horrid year winds down.

Just the other night we entertained some lovely guests and they chose to watch When Harry Met Sally… (1989); they made a wise choice. Remember how the movie is interspersed with candid segments of married couples sharing stories of how they met? Modern Love is kinda if someone made a short film of those lovely stories and the “someone” is John Carney, the man behind probably the best trilogy of music films – Once (2007), Begin Again (2013) & Sing Street (2016) – ever made.

Modern Love is based on the New York Times’ column that explores relationships, love and the human connection. This is love in all its combies, permutations and guises – an unlikely friendship, a lost love resurfaced, a marriage at its turning point, a date that might not have been a date, an unconventional new family. These are unique stories about the joys and tribulations of love, each inspired by a real-life personal essay from the beloved New York Times column “Modern Love.”

At a run-time of not longer than 30 minutes, none of the stories overstayed their welcome and this is economical storytelling at its best. That’s not to say they don’t hit the spot. I love that the stories are not just about romantic love. The game plan here is not about a meeting of lips or a tessellation of two bodies, but to look at different kinds of love.

It opens with a strong episode about a platonic friendship between a girl and a doorman. It ends with one of the beautiful lines ever spoken by the doorman, kinda like the tears inducer “I see you” line from The Joy Luck Club (1993).

The second episode takes a two-pronged narrative approach to tell a story about missed chances. This one made me a teary wreck. It managed to do so much in 30 minutes than most 90-minute movies.

The third episode was a surprise and a poignant look at a young woman suffering from Bipolar. A couple of months ago, I was teaching a Secondary Three class about mental illnesses and if I had seen this earlier I would have screened this for the kids. Nothing hits us better than gorgeous narratives like this. This episode is also a great reminder that to love others we must first love ourselves. A gem of an episode. 

The fourth episode is about the ebb and flow of a marriage when the kids are leaving the nest, and it’s about reconnecting. Love it.

I will leave you to discover the rest, but I will just say it closes out with a great one about old love being the same as young love, another gem. It is a nice way to end the anthology but the narrative takes a nice turn to close out all the preceding stories beautifully, a poignant icing on an eight-tiered cake.

Modern Love is a mixed bag; some stories are more memorable than others, but taken as a whole it is perfectly entertaining, presenting a complex theme in a relatable way. This is the perfect comfort food as the frightful year bids us goodbye.

Written by Daniel Chiam