Lousy start

I checked in on the 2 new night serials on KBS World this new year and they are both unwatchable. No doubt, they will have huge numbers of fans but I won't be among them.

Cruel Love

starring Lee Yo-won (LYW), Kim Seung-soo (KSS) and Kwon Sang-woo (KSW)
Get this story:

LYW and KSS (front and back in the pic) fall in love but KSS is married to a rich girl with an impossibly big hair-do. He gives LYW up. LYW is actually pregnant. KSS doesn't know it but his wife with the big hair does and stomps into LYW's house to tell her off, threaten her, etc. Thereafter, LYW has a miscarriage, following which her parents get into an accident and her mother dies.

Meanwhile, KSS and wife have a kid themselves and though he does well in her rich dad's company and all, he has never forgotten LYW. (His wife gets a normal hair-do.)

And, meanwhile also, KSW (middle in the pic) returns to Korea after having left in a huff with his girlfriend, who was disapproved of by his rich dad, but by then the girlfriend has killed herself. And, you guessed it, his rich dad is the same rich dad as the girl with the big hair's but KSW is the illegitimate child.

Aiyoh... convoluted, tragic love melodrama...

Thought LYW did reasonably as Surgeon BDH and has the potential for shows with a comedy slant. Don't know why she did this melodrama instead. KSS was the guy who didn't get the girl in Full House and I think this role is much meatier for him. However, I'm not about to watch it just for that. As for KSW, an old-timer whose shows I never bothered to watch, I really have no interest in him.

(picture from here)

Pretty Insun

Starring Kim Hyun-joo and Kim Min-jun

Not very engaging plot. Insun (Kim Hyun-joo) was in jail for accidentally killing someone in her younger days and is trying to live her life again. I'm not really sure why this is such a big deal because she accidentally killed the person, what. And, her mother is going to lengths trying to hide her past. How can you hide the fact that you went to jail?

Kim Min-jun was the boring Dr Lee in Surgeon BDH and is equally boring here, with the same hair and unshaven look. Yawn...

Never saw Kim Hyun-joo before and one interesting thing about the show is that she looks like Zoe Tay, ha ha.

(picture from here)

So, not the best of starts on the K drama front, I must say.

But never mind, Australian Open will be here soon and should be a better reason to be glued to the telly.

However, the local tennis front is not doing so well. Letter in TODAY: 'Dismal officiating at Sharapova match'. Ha. If I'm not mistaken, the line judges and ball boys/girls were tennis players. Now, players are not the same as officials, even after 2-3 training sessions...

And, as I told Bear Hugs, HK is right now hosting the JB Group Classic, at which both Sharapova and Chakvetadze are playing, along with Ana Ivaonvic, Venus Williams, Daniela Hantuchova and Elena Dementieva. And... tickets are cheaper than the ones for the Sharapova-Chakvetadze match...