Philip

Fantasy Couple (or Couple or Trouble?) was a new drama released by MBC late last year in South Korea which won quite a few awards including Best Couple and Best Drama overall for 2006 from MBC. It’s loosely based off the old Kurt Russell/Goldie Hawn movie Overboard but significantly expanded with more characters and more playing time to elucidate the characters. It stars Han Ye Seul as Anna Jo, Oh Ji Ho as Jang Chul Soo, Kim Sung Min as Billy Park and Park Han Byul as Oh Yoo Kyung. I recommend checking D-Addicts here for more info.

The outline of the drama is that Anna is an immensely rich, spoilt and selfish young aristocratic lady who seems to only live to find fault in almost everything everyone else does. Jang Chul Soo is a struggling jack of all trades who unfortunately seems to keep running into Anna while trying to earn a few Won. After a series of events and a fight with her ever suffering husband Billy, she gets drunk and falls off her yacht and develops amnesia. Jang Chul Soo discovers her in hospital and decides it’s time to get even, by forcing Anna (or rather, Na Sang Shil, as he calls her) to help out at his house for a month to pay back the money she owes him if she could remember.

The drama runs for 16 episodes of about 1 hour each, so it’s not too much to get through. It’s a good sign that Korea is moving to more humorous dramas as it was getting a bit stagnant with the same recycled plot clichés (amnesia is definitely one of them, if you’ve seen Stairway to Heaven you know what I mean) with numerous deaths, injuries or sheer bad luck on the way. So, I hope they’ll continue to fund light comedy like this, I’ve been sorely missing it. I’ll pop up some synopses of the few few episodes and screen captures to give people an idea of what it’s about.