My Sweet Dear Review – Served With Excess Sugar & Cliches

Between ‘The Tasty Florida’ and ‘My Sweet Dear’, it’s hard to say which BL Korean mini-series was more boring, cliched and cringe-y . Both are set in the culinary world, with a lot of the story unfolding in a restaurant filled with good-looking men. And both shows lack a well-written script.

Directed by So Joon Moon, “My Sweet Dear” stars Jang Eui-Soo and Lee Chan Hyung. Jang Eui Soo looks completely different (handsome still) as Jung Woo, a rookie chef who can re-create any dish he tastes, but has no formal training in cooking. Lee Chan Hyung plays Do Gun, the talented experience ‘head chef’ of a michelin star restaurant called “Laura Dining. The the owner isn’t very happy with Do Gun’s old-school approach to food, and brings in Jung Woo to shake things up. Will the two chefs get along? And is there more to Jung Woo’s entry to the kitchen than meets the eye? That’s the rest of the story.

I am freaking tired of saying the same thing over and over in my reviews – the show looks good, the actors do their parts well, everything is sparkly/pleasing to the eye, but the story is a snooze-fest. It’s only 8 episodes long, 10-11 minutes each, but after episode 5, I was already fast-forwarding stuff. The dialogues are overly cheesy and some scenes are predictable AF. It’s your typical ‘foes to lovers’ type of plot. Two attractive strangers meet, cannot stand each other in the beginning, but as they begin to spend more time together…. sparks fly. Duh. Towards the end, the makers throw in a conflict, make the leads fight, scream, cry. Eventually they clear things up and patch up again. Fin.

A simple story is dramatized excessively, as if they are making some sort of tragic romance movie. There weren’t any fun moments, clever banter or anything worth remembering. A lot of us love it when the actors look like desserts, but that doesn’t mean makers can simply skip working on having an entertaining/decent story. It’s like they went “hey we have a bunch of cuties, just make them do whatever, people will watch”. Guess I am guilty of watching the show for the exact same reason. But we are all allowed to have regrets.

It’s 4/10 from me. Watch it if you are a Jang Eui-Soo fan, he is dashing as the suave chef, a complete departure from his older roles.