My review of 2020 wouldn't be complete without some Korean dramas. Kudos to Netflix for getting so many of them. Of the ones I watched last year, I can definitely recommend these (also see this post for more):
It's Okay to Not Be Okay: Utterly gorgeous, with fantastic acting and a heart-wrenching (but in a good way) story of brothers and found family and what counts as normal and who gets to decide what you're going to be.
Mystic Pop-up Bar: light and mostly funny fantasy grounded with some great acting. A pop-up bar is a mini-restaurant in a tent (like a less-portable food truck, with a few tables); this one is a front for a woman doing hundreds of years of penance by saving lost souls.
Start-Up: a not-terribly realistic story of a tech start-up succeeding despite the odds. Fun because of the ensemble cast and the transforming relationships among them.
Strongest Deliveryman: funny, feel-good David vs Goliath story about a big corporation trying to take over mom & pop restaurants. The two second leads might grate on you for the first several episodes, but they have great character arcs so hang in there!
Hyena: two cut-throat lawyers being very clever about cutting each other's throats despite being irresistibly attracted to each other. They are so crazy unscrupulous that you can't help rooting for them!
Memories of the Alhambra: if you fell in love with Hyun Bin in Crash Landed on You (go watch that one first!), you will want to check out this interesting fantasy. He's not as swoony in this one (probably because I wasn't as invested in the romance), but it's a cool plot.
A Korean Odyssey: The ending of this one is terrible, but it's still worth watching for the wonderful characters of the Monkey King and his hilariously amoral immortal compatriots. Definitely watch it long enough to meet the zombie girl and follow her arc—she's fantastic—, and then stop around episode 13 or so when the writers apparently all got their brains eaten or something and decided to introduce a sorceress who has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the plot and derails it entirely.
Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung: if you're in a historical for the costumes and the palaces and could care less if it's remotely true to history. Pretty topical, actually: should a historian edit history because it's inconvenient for those in power? Cute romance is secondary to girl-coming-into-her-own story.
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