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Pierce Conran

This article contains spoilers.
Lead cast members: Kim Dong-wook, Jin Ki-joo
Latest Nielsen rating: 4.6 per cent
When it comes to Korean dramas, adherence to formula comes with draws and drawbacks. The comfortably familiar aspects of these screen stories are undoubtedly a benefit, but at the heart of that familiarity sometimes lies a lack of narrative innovation.


The KBS series My Perfect Stranger had a charming beginning a few weeks ago, whisking us to rural Korea in 1987 in its Back to the Future-esque time travelling car. It also hooked us with the sinister promise of a case of serial killing.
TV reporter turned time-travelling sleuth Yoon Hae-joon (Kim Dong-wook) spent much of the first two episodes rushing backwards and forwards through the magical tunnel connecting the present and 1987 in sleepy Woojung Village, as he sought to unravel the mystery of his own death in the near future.
My Perfect Stranger: nostalgic K-drama with a Back to the Future twist
During all that yawing on the space-time continuum, Hae-joon inadvertently whisked publishing house editor Baek Yoon-young (Jin Ki-joo) back to the past with him. Yet with the vehicle now out of commission, the pair are stuck in the past, where they remain.
For Hae-joon this is a setback, as he’s thinking ahead to his own grisly demise on a frozen lake, which he witnessed thanks to one of his early time-travelling joyrides.
But for Yoon-young this is an opportunity to relive the past and give voice to what was left unsaid, as her mother has only just died in the present. In Woojung in 1987, Yoon-young’s mother, Lee Soon-ae (Seo Ji-hye), is alive and well, and struggling through her high-school years.

Also there is Yoon-young’s teenage father, Baek Hee-seob (Lee Won-jung), who in the present is an absentee dad and an alcoholic. Soon-ae and Hee-seob are not an item yet and Yoon-young, wounded by her painful family memories, would rather keep it that way.
Driven by these emotions and perhaps not in her right mind, it doesn’t occur to her that she would cease to exist were her efforts to keep her parents apart a success – which is an ironic inversion of the Back to the Future story.
The main narrative thrust is Hae-joon’s search for the person who will be responsible for a series of deaths that are about to befall the populace of Woojung.

Among the suspects on Hae-joon’s radar are Ko Min-soo (Kim Yeon-woo), who is jailed in the present for the murders but who Hae-joon believes to have been framed for the crimes. However, young Min-soo is a nasty piece of work, prone to sneaking up on women in the middle of the night with bad intentions.
Hae-joon is also keeping an eye on Hee-seob and his brash friend Yoo Bum-ryong (Joo Yeon-woo), especially when the latter begins to show an interest in Lee Joo-young (Jung Ga-hee), the substitute teacher who comes to town and who Hae-joon knows will be the first victim.
With Yoon-young’s help, Hae-joon tries to identify the killer as well as stop the murder. At first he seems to succeed, but he soon learns the hard way that meddling with the past can have unforeseen consequences.
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As with other convoluted Korean serial killer mysteries, the deeper we delve into the story the shallower it becomes. Predictably, everyone winds up being related to one another, to the point that the show’s English title (the Korean one is Met You By Chance) begins to sound like a misnomer.
The circular storytelling turns in on itself until we reach the big reveal: that Ko Min-soo’s younger sister Mi-sook (Ji Hye-won) – Yoon-young’s nasty novelist boss (Kim Hye-eun) in the present – may in fact be Hae-joon’s long-lost mother.
It’s as though Hae-joon’s spot of vehicular trouble in episode two put the brakes on the story as well, sending a shake throughout Woojung until it begins to fall in on itself.

The time-travelling car, whose magical properties are left completely unexplained, launched the story in an interesting direction but it was merely a device to initiate a stereotypical tale about two people coming to grips with their shared family traumas.
It’s a shame that the car is so quickly sidelined. Surely it could have been used to thread the story together with more novel stitches.
Also placed on the back burner is the show’s 1980s setting. My Perfect Stranger has a bit of fun with props and costumes early on, but the period detail soon becomes an afterthought.
Of course, since the show is specifically set in 1987, it was always going to take aim at the emotional jugular by invoking the traumatic student protests of that year. Police brutality makes a big entrance halfway through the series, although its connection to the narrative is negligible. Shoehorned into the story and manipulative, it comes across as glib.

Despite its narrative setbacks, My Perfect Stranger isn’t without its charms. The sunny nostalgia and bright performances by the fresh-faced cast provide enough of an anchor to keep the show from drifting off entirely.
Over the remaining weeks we’ll no doubt get closer to finding out who the real killer is, while Hae-joon and his father, Yoon Yeon-woo (Jeong Jae-kwang), fix up the car. Once it’s running again and past and present collide once more, we could be in for some fireworks. But will that be enough to make up for the slack of the show’s saggy midsection?
My Perfect Stranger is streaming on Viu.


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Kim Dong-wook plays a TV reporter who travels back to 1987 to solve a serial killing, and unintentionally takes Jin Ki-joo’s publishing house editor with him
After a promising start, the show’s formulaic nature becomes obvious and the period trappings fall away. Bright performances from a young cast remain a draw


Kim Dong-wook’s time-travelling TV reporter is on the trail of a serial killer in rural South Korea in My Perfect Stranger, and along for the ride is Jin Ki-joo’s publishing house editor, with past issues of her own.
