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Pierce Conran

This article contains spoilers.
Lead cast: Cho Yi-hyun, Choo Young-woo, Cha Kang-hoon, Choo Ja-hyun
Latest Nielsen rating: 4.43 per cent
At the heart of the supernatural high school romcom Head Over Heels are two characters who, on the surface, appear to be very different.
Yet as the show progresses, they come to learn that they share much in common. Both have been marginalised by society and abused by their families thanks to their connections to the spirit world.


Ever since she was a young girl, Park Sung-a (Cho Yi-hyun, All of Us Are Dead) has been able to see ghosts. When she isn’t at school, she moonlights as a masked shaman with her “spiritual mother”, the somewhat grandiosely named General Dongcheon (Kim Mi-kyung, Welcome to Samdal-ri).
She presents herself as a bubbly, happy-go-lucky young girl, both in school and in the temple, but she has to hide her identity as a shaman, a profession with a lot of stigma still attached to it. Yet she faces the world head on, zig-zagging through her double life with a smile.
But she also has a fraught personal history. Her parents left her with General Dongcheon as a child and never came back for her. We learn later in the series that at first her parents were delighted with Sung-a’s supernatural gift, which they milked for every penny it was worth, until the day they left with the cash and without their daughter.
Bae Gyeon-woo (Choo Young-woo, The Tale of Lady Ok), who transfers to Sung-a’s school at the beginning of the series, has had an even worse time of things and makes no effort to hide it.

He has been plagued with bad luck since childhood and was also abandoned by his parents. He is being raised by his grandmother, Oh Ok-soon (Gil Hae-yoon, The Haunted Palace), who brings him to Sung-a’s temple to try and cure him of his curse.
Sung-a can see the curse hovering over him and is dismayed to discover that it will claim his life in 21 days, especially since she falls in love with him at first sight. Thus, she endeavours to be his protector, whether he wants it or not (he definitely doesn’t).
Try as she might, bad luck continues to plague Gyeon-woo. Worst of all is the death of Ok-soon and the horrible treatment Gyeon-woo receives from the rest of his family at her funeral, who boot him out of it while spewing invective at him.

Following this nadir, Sung-a must double down on her unwanted guardianship of Gyeon-woo when his suicidal ideation manifests in a “suicide ghost” who begins to draw too close to him.
She manages to repel Gyeon-woo’s thoughts of death and even chip away at his resistance to her, but she is unable to stop the inevitable.
With only one day left to steer clear of the curse that will kill him, Gyeon-woo, in a bid to protect Sung-a, enters the haunted building that General Dongcheon has been trying to exorcise all season.
For his troubles, the murderous spirit residing inside possesses him. He then turns into Bong-su, who is one life away from the one hundred he needs to claim to become an evil god.

But all is not lost. Such is the power of Sung-a and Gyeon-woo’s connection that when she touches Bong-su, he turns back into her crush. This sets the stage for much hand-holding at school until they can figure out how to get rid of Bong-su.
Bong-su has been receiving a helping hand from the conniving shaman Yeom Hwa (Choo Ja-hyun, Little Women), who is both General Dongcheon’s former spirit daughter and connected to Gyeon-woo’s family and his curse.
Head Over Heels is pretty stylish when it comes to depicting the spirit world and the shamanic rituals that are central to its story, but more often than not its focus is on teen romance. That’s a pity, as it’s the weakest link in the show.

And the weakest side of that link continues to be Cho, whose spirited performance remains as high-pitched and forced as it was in the show’s opening, making it clear that Sung-a is unlikely to ever be more than a caricature.
Still, the series has improved somewhat from its inchoate start, which couldn’t find rhyme nor reason between its extremes of mawkishness, shaman horror, high-school high jinks and cutesy romance.
It would be a stretch to claim that those elements have found a way to coexist, but the production values and some of the set pieces at least give us a reprieve when things aren’t working on screen.
Head Over Heels is streaming on Prime Video.


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Head Over Heels is improving but the Prime Video Korean drama starring Cho Yi-hyun and Choo Young-woo could still be doing a lot better


Head Over Heels is improving but the Prime Video Korean drama starring Cho Yi-hyun and Choo Young-woo could still be doing a lot better.


Prime Video K-drama Head Over Heels midseason recap: shaky supernatural high school romcom

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Head Over Heels is improving but the Prime Video Korean drama starring Cho Yi-hyun and Choo Young-woo could still be doing a lot better

Head Over Heels is improving but the Prime Video Korean drama starring Cho Yi-hyun and Choo Young-woo could still be doing a lot better