K-drama If You Wish Upon Me: Ji Chang-wook leads heartwarming and often cloying hospice melodrama
- Ji Chang-wook plays a devil-may-care young man who causes a car crash with an ambulance taking a dying man to fulfil his last wish
- He ends up doing community service at a hospice, where he meets MMA trainee Seo Yeon-joo, played by Sooyoung of K-pop group Girls’ Generation
Whereas Ji’s magician buried his pain under smiles and parlour tricks in the Netflix show, with If You Wish Upon Me’s wayward protagonist, Yoon Gyeo-rye, the pain is plain to see.
Cycling through juvenile institutions and prison sentences after a childhood in an orphanage, this young adult lives like there’s no tomorrow, spends money by the fistful and tackles just about everything else in his life with the same devil-may-care attitude.
Just released from prison at the outset of the series, Yoon is immediately chased by thugs to whom he owes money. After giving his pursuers the runaround, he picks up that money at a veterinary clinic run by an old orphanage pal – as well as Sonny, the dog that he left in his care.
The vet tells Yoon that Sonny is dying and recommends that he be put down to ease his suffering. But Yoon isn’t ready to make that decision. Instead, he opts to book the two of them into a swanky hotel suite and buy a flashy imported sports car.