Daily Dose of Sunshine (2023) [+]
Aug 05 2026
Daily Dose of Sunshine is a South Korean serious drama taking place at the psychiatric ward of a university hospital. It runs 12 hour-long episodes.
Jung Da-eun (Park Bo-young, I've seen her in five other drama series and she's really good) is a new nurse transfer to the psychiatric ward. As she adjusts to the routines and patients she can't help but become too close to the patients which sometimes help and sometimes hurts the patient or herself. Each episode generally concentrates on one patient and their particular illness and often one of the nurses has similar issues but maybe not as strong and hidden.
Half way through the series a crisis develops after one of the patients commits suicide. Da-eun is deeply affected but keeps it inside and slowly starts to break down in private until she snaps and forgets what happened, thinking that patient is still alive and fine. She goes on leave where she breaks down further until finally she tries commit suicide and ends up at another psychiatric ward where for the most part the staff don't know she's a nurse.
The second half of this is that once she recovers she tries to keep what happened to her private (the head nurse knows) but it eventually backfires and causes a backlash from families of the patients who don't want a former mental patient treating their loved ones. There's also a slight romance arc as a doctor from another department, Dong Go-yun (Yeon Woo-jin -- Marriage, Not Dating, 2014, as lead male; Thirty-Nine, 2022, in a supporting role as boyfriend), finds that his neurotic habits subside whenever Da-eun is around...
It's a pretty good series. Serious without being dark (even with a suicide). The two to four episodes when Da-eun is going to snap and then in psychiatric ward is very well done. Throughout the series he hear her inner monologue so when she's committed she all "I am sane. I just have to prove it so I can be released and go back to my normal life." and you see that she also does all the crazy patient behavior (e.g. pretending to take her meds) and rationalizes it to herself much as other psych patients probably do.
A good drama.
Jung Da-eun (Park Bo-young, I've seen her in five other drama series and she's really good) is a new nurse transfer to the psychiatric ward. As she adjusts to the routines and patients she can't help but become too close to the patients which sometimes help and sometimes hurts the patient or herself. Each episode generally concentrates on one patient and their particular illness and often one of the nurses has similar issues but maybe not as strong and hidden.
Half way through the series a crisis develops after one of the patients commits suicide. Da-eun is deeply affected but keeps it inside and slowly starts to break down in private until she snaps and forgets what happened, thinking that patient is still alive and fine. She goes on leave where she breaks down further until finally she tries commit suicide and ends up at another psychiatric ward where for the most part the staff don't know she's a nurse.
The second half of this is that once she recovers she tries to keep what happened to her private (the head nurse knows) but it eventually backfires and causes a backlash from families of the patients who don't want a former mental patient treating their loved ones. There's also a slight romance arc as a doctor from another department, Dong Go-yun (Yeon Woo-jin -- Marriage, Not Dating, 2014, as lead male; Thirty-Nine, 2022, in a supporting role as boyfriend), finds that his neurotic habits subside whenever Da-eun is around...
It's a pretty good series. Serious without being dark (even with a suicide). The two to four episodes when Da-eun is going to snap and then in psychiatric ward is very well done. Throughout the series he hear her inner monologue so when she's committed she all "I am sane. I just have to prove it so I can be released and go back to my normal life." and you see that she also does all the crazy patient behavior (e.g. pretending to take her meds) and rationalizes it to herself much as other psych patients probably do.
A good drama.