Elegant Friends

Don't care about the reviews, you need to watch it to understand.

A group of students who are members of an amateur dramatic group are linked with the murder of a teacher. Twenty years later they are still friends but history seems to be repeating itself as there is another murder in which they will all fall under suspicion. All of them have dark secrets which will be exposed as the series evolves and some may not be such close friends as they thought. A very well acted story where each character is developed gradually as the story leads you in different directions until the truth is exposed. My only criticism is that it could have condensed the story by about 2 episodes but even without that it is still entertaining.

Unlike most K-drama titles on Netflix, this isn't for people under 40 and have mostly single friends. Some topics and conversation, I don't see them be able to relate to at the same level.

While most K-dramas suffer from overly drawn out pacing after first few episodes e.g. Karaoke, drinking, bantering/argument, and solo introspection scenes, this show's pacing has been very good.

I'm into episode 7 and it's still tightly scripted. You don't really want to skip through any scenes. Considering the age of the characters, they're all played by veteran actors with 20+ years under their belt.

I don't want to spoil the show too much, so all I would say is, I'm a middle age guy with very short attention span, but this is one of the few K-drama shows on Netflix that had me binging.

I gave this an 8 rating for the mystery and "who done it" value. However, I didn't particularly like the K-drama as a whole. It centers around a group of very close friends that were in college together and now are in their 40s and living in the same town. The series basically has an adult theme centering around unsolved murders, extortion, rape date drugs, obsessive old love, adult film director and actresses, getting duped by underage scammer, paying scammers to convict friend's wives into bed to trick them into getting caught so they can have a chance to get their old girlfriend back, innocent children involved, etc - all the while in college boys protecting boys and later in their 40s men protecting men. Each person has their own personal story as to why they are the way they are and is divulged slowly. The 16th episode you find who the real recent murderer is. The 17th episode is an add on to divulge the final update of each of their personal story ending. I was really disappointed in my favorite character Jo Hyung-Woo's update on his personal story. How ridiculous. I think the script could have been better.

Drew by the heavy marketing, I have high expectation for this series. Watched until episode 13 and decided it is enough and gave up. Simple and predictable plot, but that is not the problem, simple plot can be sophisticated with good execution and presentation. Which is what this TV show lack. The director wants to produce an aura of suspense but the end product gives the feeling of incompleteness and leads to nowhere.

Characters have no depth and actually irritating and annoying. Dialogue cheesy and boring, at times, hilarious and illogical. It could be more bearable if actors are good. The lead actress - Yun-ah Song is a disaster, void of expression and 90% of time is stony faced. It is always a pain to watch bad lead actors and actresses because they dominated most of the screen time. The villain - Tae-Hwan Lee, overacting and just flat out bad acting. His translation of a bad person is to forcefully open his eyes as if in shock.

Personally I feel it is a waste of time and not recommended.