[Kdrama] Detectives of Seonam Girls' High School
For the past month or so, I have been watching many high school based Korean dramas. I haven’t really watched any since avoiding Boys Over Flower. The Japanese does this quite well, and some of my favourites (Nobota Wo Produce, Dragon Zakura) are high school based.
This all started with a drama called “Detectives of Seonam Girls' High School.” The poster looked cute and I was hoping for something like the twdrama “Pi Li MIT” where a high school student solves mysteries.
"Detectives of Seonam Girls' High School" is definitely different from a typical kdrama. If anything, it is like a jdrama. Complete random events - each episode was rather episodic - strung together by an underlying mystery.
They covered dark themes - bullying, teenage pregnancy, suicide, etc…but somehow manages to keep every episode light. This too is reminiscent of jdramas. A bit on the preachy side at times.
I cringed at the creepy factor of the teacher. He’s a little too…involved with the lives of his student. Special solo after school sessions? Major red flags. Other than that, it was good.
The girls themselves - makes me wish for my high school days. They seem to have a blast solving mysteries. As for the acting, 3 out of the 5 actresses are decent (Jin Ji-hee, Kang Min-ah and Lee Min-ji). 2 actresses (Lee Hyeri and Stephanie Lee) still needs to refine their acting, but at least they didn’t get much air time.
I wish there was more depth in the story…being episodic is great (at least the stories don’t get stale) but it was also its downfall. The side characters didn’t seem to have much depth outside their initial story. We don’t hear from them afterwards. The last episode was just….weird. That didn’t help. I didn’t care for the overarching story. I think my favourite one was the teenage pregnancy one…
I wouldn’t say this drama is particularly memorable, but it was entertaining. I didn’t feel like it was a complete waste of time *cough* heirs*cough. I’d give it a 7/10.
After this series, I just had to watch another school based drama, and finally given how people kept mentioning how great it was, I watched School 2013.