Skip to main content

Yeonmo / The King's Affection (2021)

After Hometown Cha-cha-cha, my friend recommended Yeonmo/The King’s Affection, then still one of the top Netflix shows here.  I’m usually fine with Chinese historical drama, but I’m not a sageuk fan as I find them too long and slow-moving.  Not even Dae Jang Geum, global hit that it was, could hold my attention.  20 episodes of Yeonmo should be okay, so there I went!



Such photogenic actors, colours and composites of flowers, trees and pond/lake/river/sea for the setting.  Rather unschooled in sageuk, it was only while watching Yeonmo that I realised how beautiful the traditional male hanbok looks.  The textures are lovely, as are the pinks, purples, greys, blues… well, every colour they wear!  



Leads Park Eun-bin and Rowoon (she much more so than he), and Choi Myung-bin, the teenage sweetie playing the young version of Dam-yi (Eun-bin) and her twin brother (although twins of different gender shouldn’t be identical, ha!), are solid.  Lee Hwi’s (Eun-bin) eunuch is hilarious, too.  

 


The plot is intriguing, and the dark opening scenes where the baby girl twin is supposed to be killed (because she cannot share the womb with the crown prince, hmrmph) make an exciting starter. 

However, the story drags in the last few episodes, and there is much senseless battling and killing towards the end.  Some plot holes and unanswered questions distracted me too, such as: how does Lee Hwi survive the poison tea, what exactly does the evil grandpa have in mind amassing all that power when he is his age, how is the bodyguard a top swordsman with his fringe always in his eyes and how does he survive the fall/jump off the cliff with the book still more or less intact (presumably he fell into the water rather than on the rocks since he is still alive), and why doesn’t the commander jump with him instead of standing there to be killed by the soldiers?  Also, I thought the show could do without certain characters, such as the crook uncle and the minister’s daughter who wants to marry Ji-woon (Rowoon).



I’d still recommend this to anyone who likes K-drama, sageuk or rom-coms.  It was also fun watching videos after that of Rowoon and the bodyguard (Choi Byung-chan) singing and dancing as the K-pop idols that they are!  You can find it here: Yeonmo / The King's Affection

 

20 episodes, KBS


Congratulations to the Yeonmo team for winning an Emmy this year!

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A lesson in love

I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world. -Mother Teresa Most of the time my eyes just glaze over when I see article upon article of football news. One caught my glazing eye over the weekend, though - 'De la Cruz - Mother Theresa in boots' , because of the familiar name. Mother Teresa, that is. It was the first time I’d ever heard of this de la Cruz guy, an EPL player who hails from Ecuador (GNI per capita US$2,630; as a comparison, Singapore’s is US$27, 490 – source: BBC country profiles ). His is a great story to illustrate that famous Chinese saying about not forgetting your roots. According to the article, ‘Each month a proportion of that salary (about S$150,000) Reading pay him - be it 10 per cent in January or 20 per cent in February - goes direct to the village’ (where he grew up). (Picture and profile from here ) Here's what he has been credited for: 1. 'The 2002 World Cup,' de la Cruz reflects, 'finan...

True train school

‘Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having minds, but not perceiving truth; having hearts that are never moved and therefore never set on fire. These are the things to fear, said the headmaster.’ How would you like to have such a headmaster? I finally re-read (read it first as a teenager) Totto-chan, The Little Girl at the Window , a ‘school story’ by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, translated by Dorothy Britton. Totto-chan is the name Tesuko Kuroyanagi called herself, and the book is about her life during her school days at Tomoe Gakuen. Totto-chan was expelled from her first elementary school because of her ‘disruptive’ behaviour, which included constantly opening and closing her desk top (because she was so thrilled by it), ‘vandalising’ her desk (because there wasn’t enough space on the piece of paper to draw) and standing by the classroom window waiting for street musicians to pass by or talking to swallows. Her mother, although probably alarmed about the ...

When the best man doesn't win

Speaking of 'sway' spurned lovers, the latest one I've come across is in Love Revolution ( only 12 episodes!), a J show I recently watched. Heroine of the story is pretty, 30-ish Smart Doctor, who is dying to fall in love and get married. She meets Aspiring Actor and Broadcast Journalist (right). She falls for Broadcast Journalist like a ton of bricks. It's obvious from the start (to the audience but not to her) that Aspiring Actor is nuts about her. But... she has fallen for Broadcast Journalist like a ton of bricks already. No doubt, Smart Doctor and Broadcast Journalist must be given credit for their love that stands the tests of time, separation and misunderstanding, but the one who loves most in the show is undoubtedly Mr Aspiring Actor. What he does/does not do because of his undying love for Smart Doctor: Y does not pursue her at first because he is still struggling to survive in this small-time drama group and he knows he doesn't have much to offer Y resp...