Kevin C. Wong

Her Private Life (2019) [+]

Her Private Life is a Korean romantic comedy in 16 hour-long episodes. Sung Deok-mi (Park min-young) is a art gallery head curator who is secretly an super fan of K-Pop singer Sian (Jung Jae-won) and has the most popular web site dedicated to him.

Deok-mi clashes with new gallery director Ryan Gold (Kim Jae-wook) which gets complicated when she is mistaken for Sian's new girlfriend. That brings her a lot of hate from fans so Ryan has to pretend to be her boyfriend which is more complicated when another super fan, Sindy (Kim Bo-ra) starts working at the gallery with the intention of exposing their fake relationship.

Seon-joo (Park Jin-joo) is Deok-mi's best friend and fellow super fan. There's a small subplot for a few episodes where Ryan thinks they're in a relationship which makes him protective of their privacy. Eun-gi (Ahn Bo-hyun) is Deok-mi's sort of foster brother who later in the series reveals he likes Deok-mi so is a competitor with Ryan.

The first three or four episodes are tough to get through because it's setup and I didn't like the characters. Then it gets really good for about ten episodes, once they start "dating" and their relationship begins. The last three or four episodes get back to being a bit boring. It's like they ran out of story so there are these episodes where it's all sad as new background is revealed for each character.

I love the fan girl subplot though it kind of ends in a dud as her secret identity is never revealed to Sian (there are some close calls though).

Overall though I enjoyed the series. I did quit after two episodes then came back later and tried again so I'm glad I did that.