Doom At Your Service

Yet Another Terrific Korean TV Show on Netflix

Sometimes even a bare-bones review risks putting off potential viewers.  If I told you this is about a nice young woman given a fatal diagnosis who in a moment of drunken despair wishes doom upon the world and it shows up forthwith as Tall Dark and Handsome, and this sure as heck is a supernatural love story, I know what you’d do.  You’d make that feh-face and not bother to put it on your list.

[Quick aside—you find any typos here, skip ’em.  It was just me crying all over the keyboard after watching the concluding two episodes.]

I don’t know how the Koreans do it.  Taking the silliest concepts, already pre-loaded with every cliché in the history of storytelling, and building from them stuff like this, with superb casting and exceptional performances, even from actors who started out as models and K-pop stars, and a perfect soundtrack though I can’t understand a word of the lyrics. 

There’s plenty of humor despite the terrible grim awfulness of the central plot, and no sappiness.

Great subtitling too (and a perfect side lesson in the versatility of Korean exclamatory words—just like English!)  And all the supporting characters—and there are plenty of them—are fully-drawn believable people with beautifully-told storylines of their own. 

This is a 16-part series, and with the weather we’ve been getting, a perfect reason to load up on your favorite snacks (you’re gonna need a lot of ice cream though I managed to survive without it) and spend a weekend getting nothing else on your tasks list done.

And it’s a reminder, too, that despite all the scorn towards Netflix for so much of their offerings being absolute complete dreck, they’re making Hollywood as irrelevant as it deserves to be.  I’m a grateful child of the television age and old enough to remember when Americans did this well.  But now?  That writers’ strike—those guys can fall into a sinkhole and stay there.  We got ourselves some better alternatives.

So, not to be remiss in anything here—you believe me, right?  You have to believe me!