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Pierce Conran

Lead cast: Ahn Bo-hyun, Lee Joo-bin
Latest Nielsen rating: 4.6 per cent
Ahn Bo-hyun (Flex X Cop) and Lee Joo-bin (The Divorce Insurance) team up for the new rural romcom Spring Fever.
Following hit shows such as Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha and Welcome to Samdal-ri, this series adheres to the archetype of the sad city woman retreating to the countryside, where she finds love and healing in the arms of a local heartthrob.


This time, the woman is Yoon Bom (Lee), a teacher from Seoul. Bom – meaning “spring” in Korean – used to be a bright and vivacious chatterbox in the city, earning her the nicknames “story slayer” and “goddess of temptation”. However, her new high school colleagues in the small provincial town of Shinsu-eup would be hard-pressed to reconcile those nicknames with the Bom they know, who dresses in black and goes about her business with a blank face, never uttering a word.
Characters of this ilk usually carry a lived-in sadness to the countryside. They try to forget their pain but it nevertheless finds ways of manifesting in their expressions and behaviour. Bom’s response is more deliberate; she actively projects a void of emotion.
Her drab attire recalls a woman in mourning for a brighter past. Before leaving the house every morning, she stands in front of the mirror and repeats the same mantra to herself: “Time to start another gloomy day. Don’t smile. Don’t have fun. Don’t be happy. You’ve got this.”

Poised to upend her gloomy routine is local tough guy Seon Jae-gyu (Ahn), although when he first emerges, he seems only to be a threat.
During a meeting in the faculty lounge, the teachers panic when Jae-gyu appears on the horizon, stomping through a snowstorm in nothing but a tight black T-shirt, tattooed arms bulging at his sides.
Jae-gyu is the uncle of top student Seon Han-gyul (Jo Joon-young, Spirit Fingers) and has come to have a word after learning that his nephew is being passed over for the Filial Piety Award because he doesn’t have any parents.
Bom is taught to fear this ruffian by teachers who fill her ears with hearsay about acts of violence, feats of incredible strength and other spurious claims.

It soon becomes clear that Jae-gyu hides a heart of gold beneath his tough exterior. Even his tattoos aren’t real; they’re just decoration on an arm sleeve he once received. Since this detail is revealed early on, it is odd that he continues to wear it as a disguise.
Jae-gyu is fiercely protective of his nephew. By fearing him, the teachers only highlight their own prejudice towards the orphaned student in their charge.
But with Bom’s arrival in his life, Han-gyul is no longer the only person that Jae-gyu cares about. He finds reasons to turn up at school and keeps flustering Bom with his rapt attention and overly casual attitude.
This isn’t simply an infatuation; Jae-gyu knows Bom from the past and he is patiently waiting for her to recognise him.

This is hardly the only surprise connection in the series, which also features Lee Jae-in (The Price of Confession) and Cha Seo-won (Unintentional Love Story) in its main cast.
Lee is Choi Se-jin, a rich kid at school with eyes for Han-gyul, while Cha plays Choi Yi-joon, a lawyer who works with Bom’s celebrity mother and is trying to track down Jae-gyu, with whom he has a secret bone to pick.
Speaking of secrets, Se-jin also knows Yi-joon and, before long, all five leads wind up on a collision course in Seoul.
Spring Fever operates according to a very specific playbook, giving it little room to manoeuvre. This puts a lot of pressure on the characters, archetypal though they may be, and the performers playing them to lift up the series as a whole.

The show quickly reminds us of other versions of this set-up but for now it all amounts to superficial shorthand, and without any semblance of detail filling the margins, it is difficult to see why we should stick around for a foregone conclusion.
There may be some heart and charm waiting in the wings, but following this soft start, some viewers may decide that they have already travelled far enough down this familiar trail.
Spring Fever is streaming on Prime Video.


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Spring Fever pairs Ahn Bo-hyun and Lee Joo-bin in a rural romcom that leans hard on the ‘city woman finds love and healing in the countryside’ formula


Spring Fever pairs Ahn Bo-hyun and Lee Joo-bin in a rural romcom that leans hard on the ‘city woman finds love and healing in the countryside’ formula.


Prime Video K-drama Spring Fever: Ahn Bo-hyun, Lee Joo-bin lead formulaic rural romcom

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Spring Fever pairs Ahn Bo-hyun and Lee Joo-bin in a rural romcom that leans hard on the ‘city woman finds love and healing in the countryside’ formula

Spring Fever pairs Ahn Bo-hyun and Lee Joo-bin in a rural romcom that leans hard on the ‘city woman finds love and healing in the countryside’ formula