ReviewK-drama review: Hi Bye, Mama! – Netflix series starring Kim Tae-hee is a cloying, ponderous ghost story
- Korean drama series features Kim Tae-hee as a mother who comes back to life five years after her death and must win back her place in the land of the living
- At first entertaining, the episodes soon begin to drag as the coincidences mount up, the action slows and the tears flow. Cathartic or catatonic? It’s up to you
This review contains minor spoilers of the show.
2/5 stars
A dead woman comes back to life to reconnect with her family and friends in the Netflix fantasy drama Hi Bye, Mama!, an unabashedly sentimental look at grief and motherhood that should deeply resonate with its target viewers – while leaving many others bemused and uninterested. If you enjoy ugly-crying at tear-jerkers in all their contrived and manipulative glory, sign up right away.
If it is the metaphysical aspects of the story’s premise that intrigue you, though, you will be disappointed; the show offers no examination of faith nor any serious consideration of the Christian notion of heaven or the Buddhist concept of reincarnation.
The series marks the return to acting of Kim Tae-hee (Stairway to Heaven, Iris) after giving birth to two daughters with celebrity husband Rain. Its 16 episodes tell the intermittently touching, although overly drawn out story of how the protagonist, her loved ones, and fellow ghosts in her cinerarium learn to let go and move on. It’s a plot that would fit a feature film, stretched over 17 hours.
For artist Cha Yu-ri (Kim) and thoracic surgeon Cho Gang-hwa (Lee Kyu-hyung), who met in their 20s through their respective best friends, Go Hyeon-jeong (Shin Dong-mi) and Gye Geun-sang (Oh Eui-sik), it is love at first sight. Yu-ri dies in a traffic accident in 2015 right before she gives birth to a daughter, and Gang-hwa soon remarries, living with his second wife and the newborn Yu-ri left behind.