Midnight's Girl

Yes. Yes, I know you're going to read this maybe because of Nam Tae-hyun and I will not even fully deny this but read what else I've got to say before you love or hate the drama for an idol staring in it.

0시의 그녀 (Midnight's Girl; Girl of 0AM) is a South Korean mini drama series that aired from May 04th to 14th 2015 on Naver TVCast and MBC Every1. The special thing about this drama is that the 8 episodes are only about 15 minutes long each what turns the whole drama more into a movie of two hours in total.

Story: Gong Ji-dan dreams of becoming a superstar and after failing a casting ends up taking care of a karaoke business for some time. He meets Min Se-ra, a girl who is working part-time and helps him to not only grow as a person but as a singer while she keeps an important secret to herself.

Cast: As I mentioned before Nam Tae-hyun of WINNER is in this drama as Gong Ji-dan. While his acting was not that good and he definitely should work on that if he wants to continue as an actor and idol I think it was still good he was picked for this drama because of the music. Somehow Gong Ji-dan fit him and they seemed to also have some musical things in common which I consider an important factor - the actor needs to be able to identify with the character in some way to make it better. (Does this make more sense? I don't know if anyone gets me in this point). Anyway, I still stay with: He needs to work on his performance.
Seo Min-ji actually is a lot more experienced but her acting in this short story also seemed pretty plain but it was overall an okay thing. Her character Min Se-ra is a cheerful girl who wants to help Ji-dan as good as possible which is adorable - but she behaves too cute for her age in the drama so it was a little bit difficult for me to see her like that.
This drama has also a bunch of idols included in guest appearances - for example Yerin of G-Friend and Sangdo of Topp Dogg! Okay, since they were only customers at the karaoke/noraebang it is in fact not really necessary to judge their acting since they only appeared for a few minutes but not any longer.
Son Jin-young is in this drama as a good friend of Ji-dan, Kwang Chul. He is a character that doesn't seem that bright but I have a feeling he wasn't bad person in total so it is interesting to me.
 
Soundtrack: The main song in and around this drama is CLC's "First Love", a cute song that in my opinion fit the total theme of this series well. It is a song I personally don't like outside of the drama much though so I can't really see it as a plus or a minus. The rest of the music in the drama is alright and supports the cute and innocent feeling this drama delivers.


After all this drama is a cute love story to watch between other dramas but nothing more - just a small 'snack' you won't take too serious about a basic, vague love story that is based more on names than on the acting itself. I don't think I wasted my time though since it is cute in some way and deserves a 6.5/10 from me.

Boarding House #24

하숙 24번지 (Boarding House #24) is a South Korean TV series that was aired on MBC every1 from September 23rd to December 9th 2014.

Story: Kim Kwang-gyu opens a boarding house and six young people happen to move in. However, he controlled who moves into his house in order to find his long lost child. While all of the different characters try to find their place in life and work hard to fulfill their dreams, it turns out who can't be the owner's child. Among the three male and three female tenants romance develops as well as good friendships.

Cast: What is the best about this series is actually that most of the characters and their actors share the same name. And I honestly found everyone's acting decent. Why? It's a sitcom, not everything has to be realistic and it has to be overacted for the effect sometimes.
Kim Kwang-gyu is an actor who has been acting in a few dramas before so there is a chance most of the people reading this will have seen him before (or will probably see him in the future). His role in this was basically the most important one.
Park Se-mi from Jewelry is in this series as well, and damn! Her character was just creeping me out sometimes but somehow I ended up liking her for being loyal.
BIGFLO's High Top (Im Hyun-tae) suffered a lot because of her as Lee Bang-in. He rocked this series, his scenes were so much fun and I loved the way he was speaking since it wasn't that much of standard Korean as far as I know (I don't know much about the Northern dialects though~).
Rainbow's  Cho Hyun-young is a girl who loves her luxury brands a lot and has to try and has to move into the boarding house because of spending all her rent money for her bags also known as her "babies".
Kim Dong-jun (from ZE:A) is a sport freak who couldn't become a professional soccer player because of an injury and was left unemployed without any dreams anymore.  
Kim Sa-eun wants to date and marry a rich man and doesn't really care about looks anymore until she really develops feelings for someone.  
Min Do-hee (actually from Tiny-G), a quiet girl who can't suffers from a psychological disease.
VIXX's Ken (Lee Jae-hwan) is the son of a hospital owner who left home to fulfill his dreams.
So as you can see the cast basically consists of only idols but they delivered a solid performance in a comedy series.

Soundtrack: The soundtrack itself is kind of interesting, especially in the beginning the use of the songs isn't surprising but it was nice how they used a huge variety of songs I can't even name. It's solid.


So in the end this series got a 7.5/10 rating because it was entertaining. It was funny. It was easy to watch. And it wasn't that long. Of course the story isn't one of the rather unique once but it's okay. The only thing that was really annoying in fact was the laugh track or whatever it's called but I was able to ignore it up to some point.

If you're looking for a light and funny short series and can deal with secondhand-embarrassment, this might be the perfect not-so-serious one for you.