3
Zogitt
Australia
This review may contain spoilers
Speaker for the Dead meets Rain Man
TL;DR: Move to Heaven is special, go watch it. We need season two. Now.
The longer version: Let's try to keep it short before it turns into a postgrad thesis.
MtH doesn't hit dramatic highs but it works slowly and steadily to breakdown your emotional defence until you can't help but be touched by the many emotional moments presented by the show. On the other hand, it is not a non-stop tear jerker either. How the narratives affects you will depend on your background and your EQ. Have tissues handy, you have been warned.
It tells simple stories of people who have passed away and became clients of this specialist cleaning company. Each short story was handled touchingly and delicately. Their lives seemed mundane on the surface but that was the whole point of the show. These cleaners do more than just clean and pack up the belongings of the deceased. The father and son team have the knack of seeing beyond the flotsam and jetsam of a person's life and see some of their essences and what was their last unfinished task. Their goal is to try to complete that task on their behalf and bring closure to people closest to them, in a sense, they are the speakers for the dead. Along the way, the show touched on many societal ills such as domestic violence, bullying, elderly neglect, etc. They are not unique to Korea but they are certainly prevalent.
The show is almost perfect but not quite. The writer can be too clever and withheld information from the viewers and then did the big reveal and tell you what the clue was after the fact. Most of the heavy lifting was done by the young ML who has Asperger's but also a savant . While he is surrounded by a very supportive found family, they don't seem to do a lot other than bicker among themselves or provide the contrary views to move the plot along and for which the ML debunks as par for the course. It is not quite an ensemble cast in that sense. The uncle's cage fighting and back story added a nice action component and complexity to his character. However, some misunderstanding that lasted for years was too easily resolved in the end.
Speaking of back stories. The show was arranged sort of back to front so the show started with the forced cohabitation of basically strangers and the second half of the show revealed their complicated back stories via lots of flash backs (have tissues handy) and explained how their lives were changed. It worked quite well but the problem we have here is that the show felt like it came a full circle and then it ended. If it was the standard 16 episodes, it could have ended properly. In the 10 episodes we got, we got revelations, character growth, some closures and everything was in place for the show to go forward but it just stopped. There were hints of budding romances, the cleaning company was finally on solid footings, an antagonist that was set for revenge, even a curious new job offered in the dying minutes of the show. If that does not hint at a second season I don't know what does. Please, please give us another season. We besiege you, Old Mighty Netflix!
The longer version: Let's try to keep it short before it turns into a postgrad thesis.
MtH doesn't hit dramatic highs but it works slowly and steadily to breakdown your emotional defence until you can't help but be touched by the many emotional moments presented by the show. On the other hand, it is not a non-stop tear jerker either. How the narratives affects you will depend on your background and your EQ. Have tissues handy, you have been warned.
It tells simple stories of people who have passed away and became clients of this specialist cleaning company. Each short story was handled touchingly and delicately. Their lives seemed mundane on the surface but that was the whole point of the show. These cleaners do more than just clean and pack up the belongings of the deceased. The father and son team have the knack of seeing beyond the flotsam and jetsam of a person's life and see some of their essences and what was their last unfinished task. Their goal is to try to complete that task on their behalf and bring closure to people closest to them, in a sense, they are the speakers for the dead. Along the way, the show touched on many societal ills such as domestic violence, bullying, elderly neglect, etc. They are not unique to Korea but they are certainly prevalent.
The show is almost perfect but not quite. The writer can be too clever and withheld information from the viewers and then did the big reveal and tell you what the clue was after the fact. Most of the heavy lifting was done by the young ML who has Asperger's but also a savant . While he is surrounded by a very supportive found family, they don't seem to do a lot other than bicker among themselves or provide the contrary views to move the plot along and for which the ML debunks as par for the course. It is not quite an ensemble cast in that sense. The uncle's cage fighting and back story added a nice action component and complexity to his character. However, some misunderstanding that lasted for years was too easily resolved in the end.
Speaking of back stories. The show was arranged sort of back to front so the show started with the forced cohabitation of basically strangers and the second half of the show revealed their complicated back stories via lots of flash backs (have tissues handy) and explained how their lives were changed. It worked quite well but the problem we have here is that the show felt like it came a full circle and then it ended. If it was the standard 16 episodes, it could have ended properly. In the 10 episodes we got, we got revelations, character growth, some closures and everything was in place for the show to go forward but it just stopped. There were hints of budding romances, the cleaning company was finally on solid footings, an antagonist that was set for revenge, even a curious new job offered in the dying minutes of the show. If that does not hint at a second season I don't know what does. Please, please give us another season. We besiege you, Old Mighty Netflix!
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