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Pierce Conran

Lead cast: Kim Hye-yoon, Byeon Woo-seok
Latest Nielsen rating: 2.7 per cent
Kim Hye-yoon (SKY Castle) and Byeon Woo-seok (Strong Girl Nam-soon) team up for Lovely Runner, a frothy and febrile fantasy romance teeming with teen spirit, K-pop, fangirl wish fulfilment and no less than four “saved by the umbrella” moments in its first two episodes alone.
Lovely Runner is a time-slip drama, the popular Korean subgenre in which characters magically, and usually inadvertently, travel to or communicate with the past; these include shows ranging from Signal to A Time Called You.


Kim plays Im Sol, a woman who lost the use of her legs in her youth. At first, her handicap renders her listless and despondent, but one day in hospital, while angrily gripping a shard of broken glass, she receives a chance call from the radio show that happens to be playing in her ward.
She rages at the peppy host on the other end of the line, but radio guest Ryu Sun-jae (Byeon), a member of an emerging K-pop band, unexpectedly provides her with words of comfort: “Thank you for staying alive.”
7 of the best new Korean drama series to watch in April 2024
The call gives Sol a new lease on life and, years later in the present, she has become a bright young woman undaunted by the constant rejections from the film companies she applies to work at.
She is Sun-jae’s biggest fan, with her room having become a shrine to him and his band which has become sensationally successful in the intervening years.
Sol plans to attend a concert by Sun-jae’s group, but a series of misfortunes forces her to stay alone outside. However, she nevertheless enjoys the faint echoes of the music she can hear.
More bad luck follows as she breaks her phone and is caught in the rain, and her electric wheelchair runs out of power in the middle of a bridge.
Here we get our first big umbrella moment, as Sun-jae, being driven away from the concert in his van, notices poor Sol and steps out to shield her from the rain.

With his gentlemanly conduct and kind words, Sun-jae reinforces Sol’s spirit, but little does she know that his smile is masking personal demons which lead him to jump from the roof of his hotel that very night.
While he fights for his life in hospital, a desperate Sol tries to rush to him, taking along with her most treasured possession, a digital wristwatch which used to belong to him.
On the way there the watch is knocked off her wrist and, as she crawls out of her wheelchair and into a stream in the dead of night to retrieve it, Sun-jae’s death is reported on a news panel hanging from a skyscraper looming overhead.

She grips the watch in despair, and after pressing its buttons is magically transported back in time: Sol comes to in a high-school classroom. The clock has turned back to 2008 and she has returned to her school days, before the accident that cost her the use of her legs.
This also means that Sun-jae must still be alive, and that is something she can easily check on since they went to the same high school.
However, she did not know him back then, which makes for an awkward scene when she bursts into the swimming pool during a mock trial and rushes over to hug him in relief.
Lovely Runner’s first couple of episodes briefly set up the present story before jumping back into the past and, as Sol situates herself in her fantastical new milieu, we are treated to a range of deliberately cute and cringey scenarios.

Many of these involve a befuddled Sun-jae, but some also involve her first crush, another rocker by the name of Kim Tae-sung (Song Geon-hee).
Although present-era Sol’s feelings for him are dead and buried, she is mortified to discover that she has been transported back to the day after her high-school-age self confessed her feelings to him by way of an earnest and cloying poem.
Armed with her knowledge of the future, Sol wants to protect Sun-jae from harm, but the rules of this particular time travel series preclude her from talking about the future. Whenever she does, time freezes and no one can hear her.

Yet while she may know things about the future, Lovely Runner ups the ante and gives us a two-way street between its lead characters, as it turns out that she does not know everything about the past.
With a lively performance from Kim, which recalls Kim Tae-ri’s role in the similarly lively but richer drama Twenty-Five Twenty-One, and a charming male lead in Byun, Lovely Runner is off to a good start.
Lovely Runner is streaming on Viu.
If you have suicidal thoughts, or you know someone who is, help is available. For Hong Kong, dial +852 18111 for the government-run “Mental Health Support Hotline” or +852 2896 0000 for The Samaritans and +852 2382 0000 for Suicide Prevention Services. In the US, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
For a list of other nations’ helplines, see this page.


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Korean drama reviews

K-drama Lovely Runner: frothy fantasy romance with Kim Hye-yoon and Byeon Woo-seok bursts out of the blocks

Lovely Runner, streaming on Viu, stars Kim Hye-yoon and Byeon Woo-seok as a woman confined to a wheelchair and a K-pop idol who inspires her.  

Byeon Woo-seok as Ryu Sun-jae (left) and Kim Hye-yoon as Im Sol in a still from Lovely Runner.

Byeon Woo-seok as Ryu Sun-jae in a still from Lovely Runner.

Kim Hye-yoon as Im Sol (left) and Song Geon-hee as Kim Tae -sung in a still from Lovely Runner.

Kim Hye-yoon as Im Sol (left) and Byeon Woo-seok as Ryu Sun-jae in a still from Lovely Runner.

Netflix K-drama midseason recap: Queen of Tears – Kim Soo-hyun, Kim Ji-won capture hearts in hit romance

Kim Soo-hyun in a still from Queen of Tears.

Queen of Tears stars Kim Soo-hyun and Kim Ji-won (above) as country boy Baek Hyun-woo, and his wife Hong Hae-in, an heiress who is diagnosed with a brain tumour. 

Kim Soo-hyun as Baek Hyun-woo (left) and Kim Ji-won as Hong Hae-in in a still from Queen of Tears.

Park Sung-hoon as investor Yoon Eun-sung in a still from Queen of Tears.

Kim Kap-soo as Queen Group chairman Hong Man-dae (left) and Lee Mi-sook as his girlfriend Moh Seul-hee in a still from Queen of Tears.

The Glory star Song Hye-kyo weighs period K-drama role; Jun Ji-hyun drama Polaris shooting – Korean drama casting latest

Song Hye-kyo as Moon Dong-eun in a still from The Glory. Photo: Graphyoda/Netflix

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Ahn Bo-hyun in a still from Flex X Cop.

Lee Sung-min in a still from Shadow Detective.

Jun Ji-hyun in a still from Jirisan.

Park Hyung-sik in a still from Doctor Slump.

Disney+ K-drama review: The Impossible Heir – Lee Jae-wook, Lee Jun-young wrestle for power in clunky drama

Lee Jae-wook as Han Tae-o in a still from The Impossible Heir. Photo: Disney+

Lee Jae-wook as Han Tae-o in a still from Disney+ K-drama The Impossible Heir. Lee Jun-young and Hong Su-zu co-star. Photo: Disney+

Hong Su-zu as Na Hye-won in a still from The Impossible Heir. Photo: Disney+

Lee Jun-young as Kang In-ha in a still from The Impossible Heir. Photo: Disney+

Netflix K-drama review – Parasyte: The Grey, Train to Busan director’s adaptation of classic Japanese manga, a mixed bag

Jeon So-nee as Jeong Su-in in a still from Netflix K-drama Parasyte: The Grey, directed by  Train to Busan’s Yeon Sang-ho. Photo: Cho Wonjin/Netflix

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A still from Parasyte: The Grey. Photo: Netflix

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Amazon Prime K-drama review: Wedding Impossible – Jeon Jong-seo, Moon Sang-min in romantic drama spoiled by tired clichés

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Jeon Jong-seo as Na A-jeong and Moon Sang-min as Lee Ji-han in a still from Wedding Impossible.

Moon Sang-min as Lee Ji-han in a still from Wedding Impossible.

Moon Sang-min and Jeon Jong-seo in a still from Wedding Impossible.

Jeon Jong-seo and Moon Sang-min in a still from Wedding Impossible.

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Kim Hye-yoon plays Im Sol, a young woman who has lost the use of her legs, and who is lifted out of despondency one day by a K-pop band member (Byeon Woo-seok)
Years later, he gallantly shelters her from the rain, and later that day commits suicide. Im Sol is then sent back in time to when they were at school together


Kim Hye-yoon and Byeon Woo-seok star as a woman confined to a wheelchair, and a K-pop idol who inspires her. Years later, they meet again and, after he commits suicide, she travels back in time.
