We thought we might have a bit of difficulty getting a list of favourite dramas for 2019 when we were often clicking in and clicking out of dramas or starting and dropping dramas midway through this year. The dramas we did complete, many were just okay, but we did find our list of favourite dramas for 2019!
Our favourite dramas for 2019 are a mixture of Korean and Chinese dramas. We enjoy dramas that tend towards being more fun and light in atmosphere. So, our favourites for this year are light and fun. Below, you can find what our favourite dramas are for 2019 as well as other dramas we loved. We have also listed dramas that we stayed around and watched for the majority of the episodes but ultimately couldn’t complete and were a miss for us. We didn’t watch a whole lot of past year dramas this year. We have just a couple of past year dramas that we thought were oh-so-good! :o) :o)
2019 Asian dramas we enjoyed
#1 Go Go Squid! (Chinese Drama)
Starring: Yang Zi, Li Xian
A romance drama with a super cool and lovable male lead character that drives a story plot around the e-sport of CTF. The male lead character in this drama is a character you really root for because though he is someone at the top—he’s someone famous with a lot of admiration and respect from the CTF e-sport world—he’s also ordinary and not very impressive to those not familiar with the CTF e-sport. Those not familiar with the CTF e-sport is the majority of the population. The people the male lead character encounters don’t have much understanding or appreciation for what he does and they aren’t over the moon about his reserved character which comes off as rudeness and a lack of manners. He’s got the elders seeing him to be an underwhelming person with not much to be worthy of praise. These brings him an issue when he ends up liking the female lead character who falls for him at first sight. The female lead character’s mother sees the male lead character as not being suitable for her daughter. She prefers someone like the university classmate that the female lead character has known for a while and has many things in common with. With the male lead character being someone the female lead character’s mother does not have a good opinion of, we look forward to seeing her change her mind about him and find that he has commendable qualities about him that makes him be a suitable guy for the female lead character.
Read our Go Go Squid! Series Recap
#2 The Secret Life of My Secretary (Korean Drama)
Starring: Kim Young Kwang, Jin Ki Joo
A cute drama with a male lead character who comes to have the condition of not recognising faces after going over the railing of a high walkway. He has to rely on his secretary, the female lead character, to help him out with hiding his condition from board members of his company who wants to find a reason to remove him from his CEO position and replace him with someone else that’s to their liking and benefit. The male lead character’s inability to recognise faces brings a bit of danger when he can’t recognise the guy who attacked him and brought him to go over the railing of a high walkway which resulted in him having the condition of not recognising faces. This attacker is keeping himself near the male lead character and is able to carry out his task of removing information that may jeopardise his client’s secret movement against the status quo in the company. The inability to recognise faces also brings confusion to the male lead character’s heart when he isn’t sure who it is he’s been seeing. The female lead character is the only one who the male lead character can recognise—but only if she has on the red cardigan which is a characteristic of her. If the female lead character is not wearing it, she’s just like the many other dizzying sea of faceless people around him. What this means is that when the female lead character helps out the woman that the male lead character’s mother arranged for him to see, he falls for the impersonation of her that the female lead character does.
Read our The Secret Life of My Secretary Series Recap
#3 Extraordinary You (Korean Drama)
Starring: Kim Hye Yoon, Kim Ro Woon
A very cute and interesting drama where the characters are characters from a comic book. The actions and lives of these characters all go according to the plot the author has imagined in the world that the author has created. This is something the female lead character tries to change. While everyone else continue as they are scripted with no awareness they are going according to their character setup of a comic book, the female lead character becomes aware and seeks to change it. The female lead character is an extra character in the comic book. A setup of her character is being the fiancée of a main character of the comic who doesn’t want to be her fiancé and is mean to her. She has no like towards this fiancé of hers. The setup that makes her strive to stop her character from going according to the plot of the comic is her setup of having limited time to live. The writer has written her character to be with a heart condition and she has an ending of dying from it. There is hope when she finds that a guy—a character that is even more insignificant than her character in this comic book world that she exists in—has the ability to enter into scenes that gets performed when the time for them to be performed comes and make slight changes to them. His insignificant character that has no name and is just a face in the crowd allows him to do so.
#4 Nice to Meet You (Chinese Drama)
Starring: Janice Man, Zhang Ming En
Nice to Meet You has an opening that immediately gets your attention with the male lead character humiliating the female lead character publicly on such a happy occasion as announcing their engagement at his company’s 50th anniversary. The drama then shows you how the two met and fall in love, but for some reason they come to the point of what happened at the opening of Episode 1.
We looked forward to seeing the drama reveal what made the male lead character humiliate the female lead character like he did and then seeing the male lead character realise he was wrong to have done what he did and proceed to getting the female lead character back. The super sweet and interesting lead couple makes Nice to Meet You a marathon-able drama.
#5 Graceful Family (Korean Drama)
Starring: Im Soo Hyang, Lee Jang Woo
This interesting drama has a plot around who killed the mother of the female lead character with the male lead character’s mother as the person convicted of the crime. The two lead characters work together to get the truth revealed.
What we like about this drama is the combo of a rich female lead character from a family to a business conglomerate and a regular guy male lead character who’s a lawyer with an office in his adoptive father’s restaurant. The female lead character is sassy and the male lead character is kind-hearted. The drama is made interesting with a villain character who’s got the means to stop anyone from uncovering the secrets she wants to hide with threats or money. We were more interested in the main story than the relationship parts of the drama between the lead characters.
2019 Asian dramas – Good for the most part
Hotel Del Luna (Korean Drama)
Starring: Li Ji Eun (IU), Yeo Jin Goo
A fantasy horror romance-comedy revolving around ghosts who stay amongst the living with unresolved issues. The female lead character is the owner of a hotel for ghosts and the male lead character becomes the manager of this hotel for ghosts.
Hotel Del Luna was a very good drama that we looked forward to watching every week. We enjoyed the lead character and the plot. This would have been ranked somewhere in our favourites list, but the ghost parts of the drama were a bit too much for us. Ghost-themed stories generally aren’t our cup of tea and we tend to not pick dramas with it unless there’s romance and comedy lightening up the spooky and scary atmosphere and the general atmosphere of the drama is light. By the last couple of ghosts, we tuned in just enough to hear the story behind the reason the ghost was existing then we fast forward to when their issue gets resolved.
Flower Crew: Joseon Marriage Agency (Korean Drama)
Starring: Kim Min Jae, Gong Seung Yeon, Byeon Woo Seok, Park Ji Hoon
A period drama which features ministers greedy for power in amongst a plot around a marriage agency that specialises in connecting people to their marriage partners.
It’s got an okay plot with an okay main couple. We liked the plot of the king who started out as someone ordinary because he was sent out of the palace when he was a baby. Then, he suddenly has to take the throne because the king passed away. He’s someone the lead characters know as a blacksmith’s son, so there’s a secret identity going on in the drama which creates interesting scenes. The drama was good enough for us to finish.
Tale of Nokdu (Korean Drama)
Starring: Jang Dong Yoon, Kim So Hyun
This period drama has a plot around a king who’s got a bit of an insecurity towards losing his throne to others who seek to take it or is said to be destined for it. The male lead character is the king’s son. As soon as he was born, the king ordered him to be killed after a shaman said his son would dethrone him in the future and becomes King. This son of the king, the male lead character, survives and grows up not knowing his identity as the king’s son. An attack in his village, the male lead character goes seeking for answers on why they’ve come to attack his village with him being the target. His search leads him to a place where only widows live. He meets the female lead character of whom wants to take revenge on the king for having ordered the killing of her family when she was young. She now lives as a gisaeng in training. Both come to meet and befriend a down-to-earth nobleman. This nobleman is the king.
Angel’s Last Mission: Love (Korean Drama)
Starring: Shin Hye Sun, Kim Myung Soo (Infinite’s L), Lee Dong Gun
The drama has a plot of a fight for control of the company between two families. The female lead character is a ballerina whose career is destroyed after she becomes blinded from glass shards falling into her eyes from light fixtures shattering. The male lead character is an angel who comes to the female lead character’s side. His mission is to make the female lead find true love in order for him to go to heaven. The mission sees him falling in love with her. This is something he can’t do when, as an angel, he’s to dedicate himself to God.
The story was okay and the two leads were cute, but it wasn’t a drama that was super exciting for us. However, we loved the OST for this drama. Not one of them we didn’t love. Everyone of them were awesome to listen to!
Level Up (Korean Drama)
Starring: Sung Hoon, Han Bo Reum
A fun drama about a director specialising in restructuring companies becoming CEO of a gaming company that is heading towards bankruptcy. The male lead character is this CEO and the female lead character is the head of game development.
There are times when we just want a drama that is a simple and easy watch with a simple plot. This is what the drama is. Very simple. We see the male lead and female lead clash, antics and that sort of fun stuff.
2019 Awesome Ongoing Dramas
Beautiful Love, Wonderful Life (Korean Drama)
Starring: Kim Cheong Ah, Kim Jae Young, Jo Yoon Hee, Yoon Park, Oh Min Suk
2019 Asian dramas – Not so good. A miss for us
Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung (Korean Drama)
Starring: Shin Se Kyung, Cha Eun Woo
Clean With a Passion For Now (Korean Drama)
Starring: Kim Yoo Jung, Yoon Kyun Sang
Awesome old dramas
Journey of Flower (2015 Chinese Drama)
Starring: Zhao Li Ying, Wallace Huo
Whirlwind Girl (2015 Chinese Drama)
Starring: Hu Bing Qing, Yang Yang
ADVERTISEMENT
