Sometimes all I want to watch is a story about childhood friends who fall in love as adults. It’s such a simple trope in storytelling, and one I always enjoy. It’s also a very popular trope in kdramas – in fact many, many times while watching a kdrama it will come out around episode 12 that the two lead characters actually knew each other as children. Sometimes those tropes work successfully, sometimes they don’t.
In the case of “Love Next Door,” it worked very well. Viewers are informed in the very first episode that Seok-Ryu (Jung So Min) and Seung-Hyo (Jung Hae In) not only knew each other, but were next door neighbors and best friends as children and throughout their teen years. Not only that, but Seung-Hyo has harbored a crush on Seok-Ryu for as long as he can remember. Seok-Ryu, after several years living in the U.S., has returned home – jobless, and no longer engaged to the fiancé her family liked. Meanwhile, Seung-Hyo is now a handsome, successful architect still living in the area. They bump into each other and over time begin spending time together as Seok-Ryu seeks to reboot her life while also keeping a pretty big secret from her family.
Yoo Je Won, the director of such shows as 2021’s “Hometown Cha Cha Cha” and 2023’s “Crash Course in Romance” (both on Netflix) also directed this series. For this show he teamed up again with “Cha Cha Cha” screenwriter Shin Ha Eun.
Before I go much further, I need to speak about the additional characters that really made this show work: their parents. Park Ji Young portrayed Seok-Ryu’s mother Mi Suk and is the real highlight of this show, in my opinion. Park owned every single scene she was in, whether she was berating her daughter for not having a future, or feeling jealous over her best friend’s seemingly perfect life. She showed all the angst a woman might feel believing that her family is struggling and being powerless to stop herself from hoisting all her aspirations for success onto her daughter.
Her counterpart was Jo Han Chul, a wonderful character actor who has been on more shows than I can list. As Seok-Ryu’s father he perfectly captured the melancholy of a man who has been less successful than he hoped, but still trying his best to provide for his family.
Next door, the amazing Jang Young Nam portrayed Seung-Hyo’s distant mother with secrets she won’t tell, while next to her as her husband was another wonderful character actor, Lee Seung Joon. Together they are in an unhappy marriage, not communicating and the very definition of “staying together for the kids.”
I’d love to be in the room when casting decisions are made because when the magic happens as a cast is pulled together, they have to feel so proud about the kinetic energy felt once they get everyone in the room for the first script reading. The chemistry for “Love Next Door” – not just between the two leads, but the entire cast – is sublime. There were multiple stories in this show, and each one had impact thanks to the extremely potent cast.
I’ve already talked about how much I loved Lovely Runner and when that show finished, I was worried that whatever I started to watch next would pale by comparison. I did go through a brief funk in which nothing really grabbed my attention. And then “Love Next Door” premiered in August. I’m a fan of Jung Hae In, and had recently watched Jung So Min in “Because This Is My First Life,” so I had high hopes.
The 16-episode show took its time to roll out the story, spending a lot of the first half of the series showing the couple’s history, as well as the backstories of the other characters. As such, despite being billed as a romantic comedy, the romance piece really didn’t start to bear fruits until more than halfway through the series. But what I appreciated the most about the slow burn romance is that by the time Seok-Ryu and Seung-Hyo confessed to each other, it felt rightfully earned and deserved. This is because the chemistry between Jung So Min and Jung Hae In was in perfect harmony from episode to episode.
The writing on this show was great – we had additional side characters who were complete, full human beings with their own stories to tell, and confrontations and speeches from characters that made me feel like perhaps the writer was possibly standing in my own house overhearing arguments I’ve had with my family. We were also introduced to a couple of exes who were actually pretty awesome people (anyone who watches romances knows that the exes are usually terrible people, but that is not the case here). That was very refreshing to see here.
There was only one scene in particular that I felt should have been modified, and that was the scene in which our lead characters find themselves alone in the house soon after they’ve admitted they have feelings for each other. Suddenly, these characters – who are in their early 30s and clearly have been in previous adult relationships – begin talking as though they are in middle school. It was so jarring and out of place as to almost be laughably bad. It ruined what otherwise could have been a really, really romantic scene as our couple finally connects on a more physical level.
Thankfully, other than that scene the Netflix show mostly did not disappoint. In my opinion it was well-developed, well-written (with a few scenes excepting), superbly acted, and a good mix between romance, comedy and family drama. Was it perfect? No – it’s hard for a show to truly be perfect, but it was enjoyable and still a show I’d recommend.
My rating: 3.7 out of 5.0 stars
Comment below and let me know what you thought of “Love Next Door”…
