Graceful Friends (2020) User Reviews

mini-series from s. korea

[ksf-2 · 7/10 · 12 March 2022]

From south korea. It's an asian telenovela! Seventeen episodes. A group of college friends, their spouses, friends, exes, all live and work in the same town, so they interact a little more frequently than is probably healthy. Throw in a couple murders. The cops are taking their time figuring out who dunnem. There's a lot of humor, a lot of serious life. Married couples squabbling, as they do. And throw in some jealousy over ex boyfriends and girlfriends. It didn't need to be this long... could easily have been told in ten episodes. Once or twice per episode, we watch someone stare straight ahead... or look at a photograph, while various long songs play in the background. The subtitles are hit or miss; sometimes its hard to figure out what's going on. It's an adventure. True life situations. Episode eight is the famous wine fight... and no-one gets up and leaves! You'd think after the insults and rude behavior, someone would have said "thank you for a lovely evening, but it's time to go." it's long, but mostly good. That last episode kind of goes off the rails.. Directed by Hyun Wook Song. Written by Kim Kyung-Sun and Park Hyo Yeon.

A person's choices define that person's life

[alaningle7 · 8/10 · 29 September 2021]

A group of students who are members of an amateur dramatic group are linked with the murder of a teacher. Twenty years later they are still friends but history seems to be repeating itself as there is another murder in which they will all fall under suspicion. All of them have dark secrets which will be exposed as the series evolves and some may not be such close friends as they thought. A very well acted story where each character is developed gradually as the story leads you in different directions until the truth is exposed. My only criticism is that it could have condensed the story by about 2 episodes but even without that it is still entertaining.

Would have easily given it a 9...

[sasligunel · 7/10 · 1 November 2023]

... if it was not for the last two episodes that really left me with a "so what?" feeling.

Good cast, good story, solid start until at least episode 8. Then it goes downhill somehow as it starts to just drag on with too many repetitions. It made me feel like they just took it up the hill with all the story lines and then just dropped it to tumble down. All of the things that mattered just did not matter anymore and this made no sense. If only they did not drag it on for 17 episodes and maybe wrap it all up in 10 or maybe 12 episodes at most, it would have made justice to all that was going on.

But still it is a good watch, especially if you are over 45 as some things the characters are struggling with hit quite close to home.

ignore the 6.x ratings. If you're in your 40+, give it a go.

[incyphe · 9/10 · 29 November 2020]

Unlike most K-drama titles on Netflix, this isn't for people under 40 and have mostly single friends. Some topics and conversation, I don't see them be able to relate to at the same level.

While most K-dramas suffer from overly drawn out pacing after first few episodes e.g. Karaoke, drinking, bantering/argument, and solo introspection scenes, this show's pacing has been very good.

I'm into episode 7 and it's still tightly scripted. You don't really want to skip through any scenes. Considering the age of the characters, they're all played by veteran actors with 20+ years under their belt.

I don't want to spoil the show too much, so all I would say is, I'm a middle age guy with very short attention span, but this is one of the few K-drama shows on Netflix that had me binging.

what a wonderful drama

[zanesalvador · 10/10 · 6 February 2021]

I have always been a film person and would see like a dozen on an average weekend. Always paying attention to the cast, cinematography, screenplay, film editing and direction. Some years ago I was introduced to the South-Korean series. At the beginning I had some difficulty of dealing with that whole new dynamic. Once I understood how it worked I became a huge fan of K-dramas and spend most of my free time watching them. The characters here are so real and intense that young people may not understand what is happening. The cast wonderfully chosen show remarkable performances. A conclusion totally unexpected and the impassivity of the female lead character puts this drama on a upper level. I laughed, I cried and I shivered. Certainly, a must-watch drama.

possibly one of the worst 2020 Kdrama

[Abbye-Sei · 4/10 · 8 September 2020]

Drew by the heavy marketing, I have high expectation for this series. Watched until episode 13 and decided it is enough and gave up. Simple and predictable plot, but that is not the problem, simple plot can be sophisticated with good execution and presentation. Which is what this TV show lack. The director wants to produce an aura of suspense but the end product gives the feeling of incompleteness and leads to nowhere.

Characters have no depth and actually irritating and annoying. Dialogue cheesy and boring, at times, hilarious and illogical. It could be more bearable if actors are good. The lead actress - Yun-ah Song is a disaster, void of expression and 90% of time is stony faced. It is always a pain to watch bad lead actors and actresses because they dominated most of the screen time. The villain - Tae-Hwan Lee, overacting and just flat out bad acting. His translation of a bad person is to forcefully open his eyes as if in shock.

Personally I feel it is a waste of time and not recommended.

Give it a go, this film is amazing

[uyenkhanh-34638 · 9/10 · 28 June 2021]

Don't care about the reviews, you need to watch it to understand.

Worst k-drama ever

[buthaina-11 · 1/10 · 6 December 2020]

Nothing makes sense at all! I only watched it because I wanted to laugh at them. The actors can not act, the story is so garbage like some old K-drama. Everything is connected in a cringe way, two man love the same woman uh so classic boring asf, I just hate it and i hope the writers do not write the script for any future drama :)

English isn't my first language sorry if I seem repetitive.

Not my favorite K-Drama

[PalmBeachG · 8/10 · 3 July 2022]

I gave this an 8 rating for the mystery and "who done it" value. However, I didn't particularly like the K-drama as a whole. It centers around a group of very close friends that were in college together and now are in their 40s and living in the same town. The series basically has an adult theme centering around unsolved murders, extortion, rape date drugs, obsessive old love, adult film director and actresses, getting duped by underage scammer, paying scammers to convict friend's wives into bed to trick them into getting caught so they can have a chance to get their old girlfriend back, innocent children involved, etc - all the while in college boys protecting boys and later in their 40s men protecting men. Each person has their own personal story as to why they are the way they are and is divulged slowly. The 16th episode you find who the real recent murderer is. The 17th episode is an add on to divulge the final update of each of their personal story ending. I was really disappointed in my favorite character Jo Hyung-Woo's update on his personal story. How ridiculous. I think the script could have been better.