The benchmark for Korean & Chinese top rank film & TV seems unjustifiably skewed higher in nearly all reviews by those outside the culture. Characters & actors & scripts are nitpicked to a degree that U.S. productions aren't, and ignorant cultural biases are applied to character motivation that demonstrate total lack of awareness of difference in cultural mores. The very high level of self-parody done well that is lauded to the hilt in western efforts like the TV series Chuck is derided unappreciatively as shallow simpering, career trademark of Jim Carrey. Most of all, the production quality, in particular the substantially superior picture resolution & camera work, gets no mention. Again & again, I've been left agape at the beauty of just the picture or scene setting or camera staging in Chinese & Korean production that is so evidently a quantum level above even the best of what I see come out of Hollywood. Much of that seems to utilize the 16:9 aspect ratio with a panoramic sensibility missing altogether in western cinema weaned on the 4:3 TV screen so cripplingly dependent on the close-up of faces. Although I have only watched the first episode so far, I hesitate to binge watch this excellent series because just the one episode was so full of skilled nuance both visually & dramatically. K-drama is often derided as overly melodramatic, and I suspect the many lesser productions I never saw that constitute by far the bulk of the genre are such. But that has made the best of it, such as this show, all the more poignant as a result of its makers being well practiced in conveying passion on the screen.
