I really wanted to like this drama as but I just found the story stale after the 10th or so episode. Not casting blame on either Pae or Mo who were quite good in their roles but the story could have been concluded in 16 episodes and under.

STORY

We have a story of unrequited love, Pon has been in love with Pim since they were in school. Everyone knows he loves her; from her family, to all their friends and his family. Everyone thinks they are a perfect match, the only problem being that Pim doesn't agree and Pon has never confessed his feeling in fear of ruining their long friendship. Though I am certain that Pim deep down inside has realised that Pon loves her, and she loves him though she won't face her feelings. Throw in an ex-boyfriend keen to get Pim back and that is the basic premise of the story.

One long and frustrating story with a White Angel ML who isn't proactive at all and a FL who is just living her normal life being pursued by 2 men; her ex and her assistant. There is no romancing as Pon does not chase Pim so the story concludes when they get together in the final 2 episodes. They go from being a couple who is not a couple; to an official couple.

So if you are looking for a romantic chase with romance scenes, then this lakorn is not for you. The story pacing was extremely slow and could have been concluded a lot early, but with 24 episodes to fill up; the whole series felt dragged out and had whole stretches where the story did not move forward for episodes on end.

ACTING/CAST

Pae and Mo did a great job and their friendship onscreen was very believable and they had great chemisty. The failure of the story was not due to their acting and the support actors did a acceptable job.

REWATCH

Would I rewatch it again, not really.

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I'll be upfront and admit that there were only 2 reasons why I watched this drama; first being that it was the only drama that I interested in watching on the index page on my streaming site and secondly, I just discovered Bow from the drama with Nadech and loved her looks and performance. Sadly though, I was disappointed with the story.


STORY

The weak storytelling and wasted opportunities to explore and exploit the time travel gimmick was the most disappointing thing about the drama beside the very poor pacing all too common in lakorns.

Nang'ek travels to the future and finds herself married to a total stranger, she fends off his amorous advances because she rightfully see's him as a stranger all the while trying to see if she can go back to the past. She can't understand why she married him as her spec is the Oppa type and not a mixed, she meets her type by chance and misunderstanding ensue between the couple which is further exacerbated by the 2 women that seem to be interested in her husband. Aoey (Mik) treats her very well and affectionately and she slowly starts to fall for him.

P'ek is bewildered by the sudden weird behaviour of his wife who no longer wants to have any physical or intimate contact with him. He showers her with affection for the first 11 episodes but feel upset that she might be cheating on him with a man at her workplace.

All this played out with the backdrop of conflict in nang'ek workplace and crime at p'ek school.

The pacing was horrible as the the chase by the p'ek happened over 11 episodes with the nang'ek being cold ;for the most part, to his actions even though she cleary had fallen for him but didn't admit it to herself. Until p'ek left at episode 12 and my first reaction was "som nom na" was when she finally admitted that she loved him.

Then she finally got to travel back to the past, however that only happened in the middle of the second to last episode. We then got to see her chase him in a very rushed paced ending. I felt that she should have travelled back around episode 11 and then we would have had a funny and light story about her chasing him for a few episodes to counter balance all the episodes of him chasing her. Wasted opportunity by the writers to flip the story the other way, but what we got was episode after episode of filler followed by a rush ending.

ACTING/CAST

I'm not a big fan of Mik but he did a decent job playing Aoey. He seemed more expressive and comfortable than some of his other roles and I was impressed in the scene when he confronted her about the biscuits and left. However Bow definitely overshadowed him with her performance not just because this was a nang'ek centric lakorn, she was just the stronger actor. The chemistry between them was great and was the only thing that kept me watching.

MUSIC

Nothing special and memorable but it wasn't total trash, just generic.

REWATCH

No I would not watch it again, poor pacing, rushed ending but I admit the chemistry was great and I loved past Bow with short hair.

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A light hearted drama with some comedic elements that doesn't cross the line of overacting. I usually don't watch country style lakorns but this was part of my watchlist and I finally got to it.

As a longtime viewer of Thai drama's, finding a good light hearted drama that doesn't fall into the melodramatic extremes can be a bit of a challenge. Thai audience's have become accustomed to the slap kiss style drama's with nang'rai and p'rais. A lot of lakorns set in the country either have a very poor script, acting or substandard filming. While this wasn't a high budget lakorn; with the set being only a few locations, it was still an enjoyable watch.

STORY

A classic story about a man/boy who goes back to his hometown after heartbreak and finds love in a childhood friend and appreciation of the land and the value of hardwork. The first 6 episodes were a bit slow but it picked up pace and the cute scenes started to appear. So bear it for the first 6 episodes, while they weren't bad, they were a bit slow.

ACTING/CAST

I haven't seen Nadech act in this style of drama before so it was a change for me to see him in a light comedic role without any fantasy gimmick. He came close to being a bit overboard but didn't quite cross the line of overacting, after a few episodes he settled down and his performance became stable. He had great chemisty with all the support staff that played his family and him and the FL were a good combination.

Bow played a very convincing portrayal of a tough country girl, her accent and the comfort that she spoke the dialect made me wonder if she was really born in the Isan region. As a Australian raised Thai-Lao, the Isan dialect was something I could relate to; as it is very similar to something my relatives speak, so it was nice to understand it with only a bit of help from the subs.

Support staff did all their roles very well without any weak performers. They were given a framework, character setting and they executed it to the extent that the script allowed them to.

Both Nubtung and Danny who play Richie and Namfon need a main role in a drama. They both have the visuals and I can easily see them playing the nang'ek and p'ek. I would have loved to see their storyline developed more with better scenes.

MUSIC

I actually didn't expect the music to be so good and was happily surprised, after episode 6 they even had musical performances like a badly lipped synced MV but was still good and added to the light hearted elements of the lakorn, I wish they had more of that and started it a bit earlier as I am a sucker for musicals.

REWATCH

While I wouldn't rewatch this again like Husband In Law or My Forever Sunshine (Highly recommend),I did rewatch a few of my favourite scenes especially the cute romance scenes. I am drawn more to Bow and her performance than to Nadech.

Overall a great watch, I recommend watching this finishing something heavy to give your heart and emotions a rest.

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This drama is a part of a niche genre which seems to be pretty common in Thailand. The disquised cook/housemaid sometimes it is genderbendered , at times it can be done very well and other times it can be a hard task to finish. Unfortunately this lakorn for me was hard to finish.

STORY

Woon is a country girl who lives alone with her father; her mother left home when she was young and now she is about to start university. She and her friend Nawut assist her father to run a small business selling fermented fish to the local community. Athens run a food packaging company and is trying to source fish from Woon's community, he is "allergic" to fermented fish. They meet coincidentally in the local market.

Woon's father dies shortly afterwards and her estranged mother returns. She buys the deeds of the property Woon and her father lived in and uses this as a tool to coerce Woon to live with her in the city with her new husband and stepson. The stepson happens to be Athens. Woon refuses to acknowledge their mother daughter relationship in public and pretends that she is an adopted/sponsored child.

Shortly after moving in, Woon's mother try's to force her to marry Athens but she runs away and lives with Nawut at his aunt's place. Athens also moves out from home and just by chance, he moves next door to Nawuts aunt. Woon needs a job and Athens needs a housemaid, so Woon's disquised herself to spy on Athens and to earn money to rebuy the deed from her mother.

Slowly though Athens starts to fall in love with his dark skin country girl and Woon starts to soften. Troubles and romance follow as Woon juggles her two personas.

Though it is a pretty simple storyline, I enjoyed it til the ex-wife of Athens made an appearance and then it went from being a pretty lighthearted drama to an annoying filler. They could have finished this at episode 16 and focused more on the differences of the couple and the the chase and romance.

ACTING/CAST

This was a pretty easy role for Oil to play, there was a bit of overacting but in country style lakorns you expect that. This was my first time seeing Mook act, she did a good enough job but I just didn't feel the chemistry at all but did see flashes of it in certain scenes.

The support actors were good and I'll be honest, I enjoyed Kat and Nawuts romance more. I wish that they could have fleshed out their story over a longer period because the romance between Nawat and Kat felt rushed.

I liked Pang who played as Kat and hope she has main roles in the future.

MUSIC

Nothing really stood out so that just means it's average. The site I watched this cropped out the opening and closing themes but the little that was played was Luk Thung, keeping the theme of the nang'ek country disquised.

REWATCH

I actually might watch certain scenes before the reappearance of the ex-wife. This wasn't the worse drama just longer and more bloated than it should have been.

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If you were expecting a country romance lakorn then this might not be for you. What we have is a FAMILY drama with a bit of romance by the main leads to tie it all together set against the backdrop of a local drug lord trying to buy all the land. I'll be upfront and say I usually don't watch family drama's but by the time I realised what I was watching, I was 6 episodes in. So I was invested and hoped it would turn around. Unfortunately it became a chore to finish and but I persisted and my hope was that there would be enough sweetness by the Main Leads to offset the other stuff. I hoped in vain.

STORY

This was a messy story with so many story threads, it took time away from the main storyline of the nang'ek and p'ek. Most of the story threads were unnecessary and served no useful purpose, if this was a lakorn of 50+ episodes maybe everything could have been evenly developed but the script tried to cram too many things in the 31 episodes. Let me go through the list of story threads

P'ek and Nang'ek shared the "main" storyline.

P'ek sister,brother,mother and the gold chaser of the p'ek each had they own storylines.

Then we have the two brother in the nang'ek side who both have minor romance storylines.

Also the estranged brother of the nang'ek has his own storyline shared with his wife

We have the villain family in the farm who have 2 different storylines, one being the main crime backdrop and the other being comic relief.

Trying to give all these storyline threads some screentime just made the lakorn into a jumbled mess.

ACTING/CAST

Ben was not a very convincing lead for me but at least his character wasn't a total cuck and simp. He was very upfront with his feelings and chased after what he wanted. I did feel like his character portrayal lacked the toughness that I expect in strong leads as his character came across as too soft spoken. Chingching pulled a great performance with what the script allowed her to do, but she didn't have as much screentime as I expected due to the messiness of the story.

Everyone else did an acceptable role but the standouts were the Somyai parents who played their roles pretty well. The actress who played Keawta (one of nang'ek brothers love interest) was very pretty and would have been great as maybe a second lead.


MUSIC

I loved the music and selection in certain scenes, the opening theme and closing theme were quite good. I recently started listening to Luk Thung and the song choices were spot-on.

REWATCH

Nope

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Shin is home from university and discovers that a new attractive lady has moved next door. He immediately tries to make his moves but Dr Prai is a firm believer of social distancing but that doesn't stop Shin.

STORY

The romance was pretty light and felt really forced and quick from the FL. However this might have been due to there being only a few episodes and short runtime. I get the feeling that this was more of a COVID PSA disguised as a short drama due to the many covid advice sprinkled throughout.


ACTING/CAST

Both leads did a decent job but Tubtim was definitely the stronger actor between the two. Initially I wasn't convinced by Blew's performance but he grew on me after awhile. Tubtim was what kept me watching and I will definitely follow any upcoming works she will have. She has potential and needs a good breakout work to really showcase what she can offer.

MUSIC

A few odd choices as it was overly dramatic at certain scenes however overall it was ok

REWATCH

No, once was enough.

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Since there were so few reviews and I am currently in lockdown. I thought I would share my thoughts after a few weeks of bingeing and catching up on the last few years of Thai drama's.

STORY:

it's a light hearted romance without the emotional rollercoaster that some lakorns seem to love putting the audience through. I won't write a synopsis as the official MDL synopsis is perfectly fine but I treated this lakorns as a rest from the sometimes emotional pulling extremes of some other lakorns.

ACTING/CAST:

Peak did grow on me as Bussaba; however her character portrayal did not make much sense with her backstory. This is a girl who was introduced to the audience working at an event, had graduated with honours/distinction and who came from a humble rural background. So she should be pretty grounded and understand the rural lifestyle, yet her character goes to work in a Vineyard dressed like a hi-so on her very first day and for the first few episodes her character comes across as very childish. I won't blame Peak for that as it was most likely the script. I will say though; whoever styled her hair in the first 3-4 episodes with that ridiculous side ponytail needs to be retrained again.

Michael who played Din was not my favourite if I'm honest, he had a hard time controlling his facial expressions when trying to be comedic. His eyebrows also seem to somehow have a life of their own and would just bob up and down in some scenes. While this might be just a personal mannerism of his, it was pretty distracting and my minimum expectations for an actor would be some facial control.

Both actors who played Pu and Pokhin did an acceptable job but I did think that they were miscast. I personally think that if they swapped roles, the drama would have improved in quality.

My favourite was Sariya; pretty, good acting and her character was normal without going into the nang'rai zone . Made me search for more of her drama's. Both mothers on both sides were great and supportive even if their roles were minor.

Comedic side characters seemed a bit inexperienced and not as deft in their roles.

MUSIC

Generic elevator music mostly

REWATCH

Probably not, there wasn't enough chemistry between the main leads to really bring me back to view my favourite moments.

PET PEEVE

One of the things that made me a bit annoyed was the camera work. In some scenes where the characters onscreen are having a conversation, the camera switches from action to reaction again and again. So in some very short conversations the camera shots flips back and forward pretty quickly to a dizzying level.

That's it, I didn't hate the drama but I didn't live it. It was definitely a daytime show with all the implied quality that goes into making one.

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I have to admit; I almost got viewer fatigue while watching this. The cutting and screentime of different storyline threads was done poorly and some scenes that had no relevance could have been cutout completely. If you expect lots of romance, then this lakorn is not for you.

STORY

Trikarn has just arrived in Bangkok in search of his missing childhood sweetheart Pum who had run away from home and a forced marriage. On his first day he meets a Japanese restaurant owner; Hideko, who also runs a shared house for her staff. He is offered a job and a place to stay while he trys the find Pum. He soon runs into a woman that is the doppleganger of Pum named Palissa.

Palissa has a current boyfriend but also had been in an accident where she suffered memory loss. Palissa ends up moving into the shared house and Trikarn is suspicious whether Palissa is Pum. Supernatural stuff ensues as Trikarn chases the truth of Pum/Palissa.

With a lot of supernatural investigative drama's; the format tends to be very episodic with only a vague overarching goal. This was the case with this lakorn and contributed to my viewer fatigue, the directing went off track from the romance and started to focus more on the supernatural mystery solving. I would have had no problems if the directors/writers used the supernatural cases as a mechanism for the main couple to become closer and as a tool for Trikarn to dig into Palissa/Pum identity. However the background supernatural theme slowly became the main theme and we lost the romantic search.

I really loved the flashback scenes though.

ACTING/CAST

James and Mew had good chemistry; not as great as Mew with Mark, but the affection and love were clearly displayed by both actors.

Mew is very good at conveying the subtle microexpressions, her looks of disgust and frustration were exceptionally well done and her smile is absolutely beautiful and you can't help but smile with her.

Support staff were great though I did feel like they did Pat the dirty by making her less pretty in many subtle ways but I guess that was part of her role.


MUSIC

There were a few times when the music caught my attention at how appropriate the piece was for the scene.

REWATCH

I rewatch for maybe the last few episodes.

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I had no high expectations going into this as I'm not convinced by New as an actor and I've never seen anything by Kaimuk before. However I did see the Chinese version before this and while I wasn't a big fan of the acting, I did want to see the Thai version.

STORY

A very simple story of mismatched strangers who are forced to share accommodation and slowly feelings start to develop. This reminded me of the Japanese manga and drama Good Morning Call and Chinese campus love stories like Love O2O.

I enjoyed the story for what it was, a light romance where conflicts are something that the Main Leads overcome without being dragged out for an eternity. This is very different from Thai drama's which can't seem to get their pacing right. This had an emphasis on the ROMANCE component of the story and while this was a nang'ek centric lakorn, the p'ek almost got an equal amount of screentime and development.

What I did like a lot was that they made the nang'ek smart and not ditsy, yes she was a bit naive and inexperienced when it came to her job but that was understandable as it was her first proper job. Chinese campus love stories also have a tendency to make the FL a lot dumber compared to the ML and I'm glad to see the Thai version didn't do this.

ACTING/CAST

This had a very idol drama feel to it and was confirmed when I look into the background of Kaimuk and found out she was part of a idol group. The use of pastels in clothing,the colour saturation and gradient gave the drama a light and bright feel. Totally different from the filming style of Thai drama's and was very noticeable.

While I don't think New is a very good actor, he was perfectly cast to play the initially cold Pupaa who changes and turns into a loving boyfriend. The role itself isn't very challenging so it was just right for his acting level. While I know he has done other drama's before and I recently watched the one he did with Pancake; for me, he still feels like a very new actor who has a lot of room to grow. I would love to see him challenge himself in a slap kiss, as that seems to be the dividing line that determines good actors in Thailand, those who can pull it off and everyone else.

Kaimuk was very good in her role and I had nothing major to pick with her acting. She's one of those that grow on you as time passes, I didn't feel that much chemistry between the two leads though.

The secondary leads were a bit annoying at the beginning but once the Main Leads got together they weren't as bad.

Overall no role was very demanding for the actors but I think a more experienced team could have brought out the more subtle emotions and displayed the micro expressions better. However it was still a competant performance by everyone.

MUSIC

Nothing really stood, not even the opening track. Just very average

REWATCH

I might rewatch a few favourite scenes down the track

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