Graceful Friends

From south korea. It's an asian telenovela! Seventeen episodes. A group of college friends, their spouses, friends, exes, all live and work in the same town, so they interact a little more frequently than is probably healthy. Throw in a couple murders. The cops are taking their time figuring out who dunnem. There's a lot of humor, a lot of serious life. Married couples squabbling, as they do. And throw in some jealousy over ex boyfriends and girlfriends. It didn't need to be this long... could easily have been told in ten episodes. Once or twice per episode, we watch someone stare straight ahead... or look at a photograph, while various long songs play in the background. The subtitles are hit or miss; sometimes its hard to figure out what's going on. It's an adventure. True life situations. Episode eight is the famous wine fight... and no-one gets up and leaves! You'd think after the insults and rude behavior, someone would have said "thank you for a lovely evening, but it's time to go." it's long, but mostly good. That last episode kind of goes off the rails.. Directed by Hyun Wook Song. Written by Kim Kyung-Sun and Park Hyo Yeon.

I have always been a film person and would see like a dozen on an average weekend. Always paying attention to the cast, cinematography, screenplay, film editing and direction. Some years ago I was introduced to the South-Korean series. At the beginning I had some difficulty of dealing with that whole new dynamic. Once I understood how it worked I became a huge fan of K-dramas and spend most of my free time watching them. The characters here are so real and intense that young people may not understand what is happening. The cast wonderfully chosen show remarkable performances. A conclusion totally unexpected and the impassivity of the female lead character puts this drama on a upper level. I laughed, I cried and I shivered. Certainly, a must-watch drama.

I gave this an 8 rating for the mystery and "who done it" value. However, I didn't particularly like the K-drama as a whole. It centers around a group of very close friends that were in college together and now are in their 40s and living in the same town. The series basically has an adult theme centering around unsolved murders, extortion, rape date drugs, obsessive old love, adult film director and actresses, getting duped by underage scammer, paying scammers to convict friend's wives into bed to trick them into getting caught so they can have a chance to get their old girlfriend back, innocent children involved, etc - all the while in college boys protecting boys and later in their 40s men protecting men. Each person has their own personal story as to why they are the way they are and is divulged slowly. The 16th episode you find who the real recent murderer is. The 17th episode is an add on to divulge the final update of each of their personal story ending. I was really disappointed in my favorite character Jo Hyung-Woo's update on his personal story. How ridiculous. I think the script could have been better.

A group of students who are members of an amateur dramatic group are linked with the murder of a teacher. Twenty years later they are still friends but history seems to be repeating itself as there is another murder in which they will all fall under suspicion. All of them have dark secrets which will be exposed as the series evolves and some may not be such close friends as they thought. A very well acted story where each character is developed gradually as the story leads you in different directions until the truth is exposed. My only criticism is that it could have condensed the story by about 2 episodes but even without that it is still entertaining.

Don't care about the reviews, you need to watch it to understand.