Stream It Or Skip It?

A brand new romantic drama from South Korea spans 25 years, however the characters from the previous aren’t the identical as those from the current. However they appear precisely like those from the current. However they’ll’t be as a result of the ages are all improper. Oh, and did we point out there will likely be a while journey… finally?

Opening Shot: “1998.” We pan down on a small document retailer. A girl is placing a cassette in a window show.

The Gist: The shy lady who’s working within the document retailer is listening to a love track on the stereo. A boy from her class admires her from the window, so his good friend decides they need to go in. The good friend tries each manner he can to deliver the lady and his buddy In-gyu (Kang Hoon) collectively, however his good friend is fairly shy himself.

Twenty-five years later, in 2023, Han Jun-hee (Jeon Yeo-been) works at a advertising firm. It’s her birthday, however one in all her officemates must remind her that it’s arising, and it’s her first one alone. The officemate instantly kicks herself for mentioning that truth. One other officemate, who’s been there lower than a 12 months, thinks that Jun-hee is happening a date.

What she is definitely doing after work goes to a church service honoring the primary anniversary of the dying of her boyfriend, Gu Yeon-jun (Ahn Hyo-seop). He’s one in all over 180 folks that died in a airplane crash in 2022, and as a lot as Jun-hee appears to be dealing with it properly on the surface, she’s torn up on the within. His physique was one of many ones that was by no means recovered, and he or she simply can’t settle for the truth that he’s really gone.

She thinks again to the great reminiscences she had with Yeon-jun, but in addition the truth that she was going to spend a 12 months working in New York, and he needed to drop every little thing and be a part of her. She didn’t need him to try this, and it brought on rigidity. When his mom asks her if she ever discovered the ring he hid in a jewellery field he made for her earlier than she left for the states, she goes again to look in it, finds the key compartment and sees it’s empty.

Again in 1998, the shy lady misses the bus to highschool, and In-gyu, nonetheless crushing on her, and his good friend come by in scooters. She rides on the again of In-gyu’s scooter, and when she hangs on to him, he smiles. They’re late and must do unusual laps on the sector as a punishment.

On her birthday, Jun-hee remembers when Yeon-jun introduced an costly meal to her workplace, as a result of she was working late as common. She’s stunned, although, when a bouquet of peonies, her favourite flower, present up at her workplace. She tries to run down the one that left them for her, however can’t discover him. She then will get a DM from a mysterious Instagram account, displaying an image of a lady who seems like her with two boys, neither of whom is Yeon-jun.

What Reveals Will It Remind You Of? A Time Known as You is predicated on a Taiwanese sequence referred to as Sometime Or One Day; a film model of that sequence will be streamed on the Rakuten Viki service.

Our Take: A Time Known as You has a little bit of a fancy premise, with a lady from the current time touring into an individual from the previous who seems identical to her, who has a crush on a boy who seems identical to her lifeless boyfriend. However you wouldn’t actually know that from the primary episode. What you assume you’re seeing is the present-day couple’s meet cute again in highschool.

However then as you’re watching, issues don’t add up. If Jun-hee and Yeon-jun met and fell for one another in highschool, their relationship would have been additional alongside when he died. They usually’d each be over 40. However as a result of the shy lady seems like Yeon-jun and In-gyu’s buddy seems like Yeon-jun, you purchase into the story.

We’re additionally redirected by the truth that In-gyu has an enormous crush on the lady, whom we discover out is known as Kwon Min-ju (additionally performed by Jeon). She appears to be overly shy as a result of she’s actually in love with In-gyu’s good friend Nam Si-heon (additionally performed by Ahn). So there’s a love triangle of kinds occurring in 1998, however these aren’t the identical folks as who we’re seeing within the current day.

You get that but? And we haven’t even gotten to the time journey side. It’s a recipe for mass confusion, and evidently the present is in no hurry for Jun-hee to cosmically join with Min-ju. Perhaps the present will set that up in a manner that feels natural, nevertheless it will also be a maddening slog that gained’t actually fulfill anybody however hardcore Ok-drama followers.

Intercourse and Pores and skin: None.

Parting Shot: Again within the document retailer, Si-heon comes again in to ask the lady her title, and he or she says her title is Kwon Min-ju.

Sleeper Star: What function will Kang Hoon play as In-gyu? In all probability a big one, however we’re unsure.

Most Pilot-y Line: When the co-worker who thought Jun-hee was occurring a date asks what occurred to her earlier boyfriend, one other officemate says, “You’re higher off not realizing.” Why? So she will be able to proceed saying embarrassing issues?

Our Name: STREAM IT. Whereas complicated at first, it seems like A Time Known as You’ll reward affected person viewers with a satisfying story that’s much less hokey than it appears from the primary episode.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about meals, leisure, parenting and tech, however he doesn’t child himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared within the New York Instances, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Quick Firm and elsewhere.