Audiences will have to make their own minds up whether the good parts of “Don’t Say No” are better than the bad parts. To my mind, the good parts are worth watching. The problem is there aren’t enough good parts to have ever justified making this into a 727 minute long show. The consequence of the creators stretching out the various events in DNS is that it feels very episodic, not so much a BL series as more like a tv soap, where each episode is more or less self-contained with viewers left hanging at the end of each episode waiting to see how the cliff-hanger will resolve itself in the next. This also helps to explain why DNS is such a mixture of dramatic scenarios, uncertain of its own character.

Even so, I like how DSN tackles love AFTER the rosy falling in love stage. And also the trope of parent-conflict is reworked to the more harrowing depiction of a psychologically unwell mother.

Stories of how couples handle the day to day of their relationship are not commonplace in BL’s, but here Leo & Fiat are already an item at the start. Their love for each other though is no guarantee that they can handle the misunderstandings and the doubts and concerns that all couples experience in the early years until trust in and familiarity with each other settle in.

Beyond that, “Don’t Say No” goes into some dark places in broken families. Despite the wealthy surroundings in which Fiat grows up, the breakdown of his parent’s marriage is the initial source for his later young adult self-destructive pattern of sexual license. It seems at first as if, nurtured by the strong emotional support of his partner, Leo, he will confront the truth about his mother’s unstable behaviour; but Fiat is practiced at hiding the past from himself and will even risk his relationship with Leo to preserve his fragile mindset.

Leo, it turns out, is the gay bf/partner/husband every guy dreams about or wishes for - tall, good-looking, loving, faithful, devoted, supportive (the birthday scene is a treasure) and dedicated to Fiat’s happiness. (The public kiss on the basketball court at the end is a nice touch.) Ja Phachara Suansri brings to the role of Leo a perfect mixture of sweet doey-eyed charm & sexy allusion. And he is involved in what might be one of the ground-breaking scenes in the BL world: a prolonged amicable conversation between Leo and Fiat’s father about their love for Fiat and the transfer of responsibility for Fiat from parent to spouse.

Ultimately, though, “Don’t Say No” depends for its drama and our involvement in it on the character of Fiat, the show’s central protagonist. First Chalongrat Novsamrong comes to the part with the requisite combination of good looks and sexiness. There is even a suggestion that Fiat & Leo might indulge in some mutually consensual hard core bed play. But, more significant is the emotional baggage that Fiat brings to their relationship. For First, it is as heavy an acting burden as Fluke Natouch Siripongthon had to bear in “Until We Meet Again”; where the dramatic weight of the show depends on their character’s emotional journey and our belief in it. First gets most of it right especially given that tortured internal conflicts are harder for most young Thai BL actors. Occasionally he is left unsupported by the writer when he has to emote on his own; but the support he receives from Ja Phacara Suansri’s Leo in part helps cover many of the weak spots.

It should be no surprise, therefore, in my opinion, that while the overarching themes in this series of relationships - past & present - guide the rough shape of the show, the screenwriter proves to be the weak spot in this drama. Rather than weave the themes together - as happens in real life - the writer breaks the plot developments into set pieces with little forewarning or poor preparation. The effect is to make the show stutter in its progress and, at times, slow to a painful crawl, as the drama, structured in 12 hour-long episodes, struggles to find enough action to fill the time. (Threading of plot lines & character development is one of the key reasons Korean BL’s are generally more effective dramatically than their Thai counterparts.) Silence, for instance, is an effective dramatic device, but not when it is used because the writer has nothing else for the characters to say & the director has nothing for them to do; then it becomes tedious and reveals a lack of ideas & imagination. Characters talking to themselves in an empty room is worse: that only makes the character appear to be demented instead of having an internal reflection.

“Don’t Say No” is also littered with the dramatic device of using song to expand emotional peaks. It is an over-used device, in my opinion, and suffers from the burden it places on the singer-songwriter. No artist, to my knowledge, has been able to write so many successful songs for the one show. In fact, usually, the opposite is the case - a single theme, such as the recurring melody in “Enchanté”, works more effectively than ten or more individual songs.

A mention should be made of the poor animal wrangling of Pob’s rescue cat, Pobjer. Every cat owner will see clearly, in the scenes in Pob’s apartment, that the cat is behaving wary in an unfamiliar space, exactly opposite to how the script describes. Professional film industry animal wranglers know to get an animal to relax on set. It’s way past time that Thai film producers shook off their acceptance of low standards and embraced real film industry performance in all departments.