One thing that makes Korean and other East Asian TV series as creative as they are is that many of them are based on webtoons, which are essentially online comic books. The worlds and situations the creators of those webtoons imagine can be as outlandish as their creativity can concoct. But rooting those ideas in a real-world situation on TV or in movies takes skill. In a new Korean rom-com, a teenage shaman falls for a classmate that she figures out through her mystic abilities is about three weeks away from dying.
Opening Shot: We push in on a house on a cliffside. A shaman is about to help a teenager by forcing the demon possessing him to transition to the great beyond.
The Gist: The shaman does her thing, but an alarm goes off. It’s not anyone’s phones; it’s her watch. Park Seong-a (Cho Yi-hyun) is going to be late for her exam if this demon doesn’t leave its host within ten minutes.
Seong-a is a high school student, as the stunned crowd watching finds out. As she sprints and rides a public bike to school, her popular buddy Pyo Ji-ho (Cha Kang-yoon) catches her as she climbs over the wall outside of school. His joking reasons for waiting? He wanted to ensure that he didn’t get the lowest grade in class.
Seong-a has a goal of getting into a four-year college, although Mother Sin (Kim Mi-kyung) tells her daughter that trying to juggle her duties as a shaman and going to college will likely be too much to deal with. But Seong-a just wants to feel normal.
She certainly doesn’t feel normal when people come to her at her home “office,” the temple on her family’s property, asking for her help with all sorts of problems and issues. She’s also come to the conclusion that looks are all that matter — right before saying that she’d be swayed by a handsome man who was also caring.
One night, she is surprised when a handsome teen, Bae Gyeon-u (Choo Young-woo), comes in with his grandmother; in her shamanic vision, she sees him walk in upside down, a sure sign that he’s going to die soon. It’s also something a young cousin of hers predicted. She’s so taken with him, that she vows to protect him from all of the demons and ghosts that may come for him — something she’s tried in the past and failed at, according to her mother.
The next day, Seong-a is surprised to see Gyeon-u walk into her classroom as the new student; because she wears a veil when being a shaman, he has no idea that they’ve met before. But that doesn’t mean she won’t keep trying to protect him, even if she has to fight a water ghost that’s terrorizing another classmate in the boys’ bathroom.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Based on the webtoon Gyeonwoo and Fairy by Ahn Soo-min, Head Over Heels reminds us of other Korean romcoms like Tastefully Yours.
Our Take: It feels like Korean romcoms have found almost every situation under the sun to throw two people together and watch sparks fly. Even so, show creators — with the help of the webtoons that are the shows’ source material — end up finding situations we haven’t seen before. Here, it’s a teenage shaman and a classmate who is doomed. It’s not exactly a situation that pops up that often, know what we mean?
But no matter what the situation, the structure is generally the same: A meet-cute, an initial conflict, then the two of them start to rely on each other. In this case, Gyeon-u seems to have a reputation that precedes him — in the second episode, for instance, he’s accused of arson — and he certainly doesn’t believe in shamans or any of that mystical hooey. So it’s going to take a lot of work for Seong-a to defeat the ghosts looking to take him away without him knowing that she’s the same shaman he saw with his grandmother.
All of this is done with a light hand; the show is supposed to be a comedy, but it’s more of a chuckle-worthy comedy, with a lot of musical cues and sound effects helping things along.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: After Seong-a defeats the water ghost by spraying the bathroom with a hose, Gyeon-u, who still has no idea she’s a mystic, asks, “What the hell are you doing?” She stammers then says, “Protecting you?”
Sleeper Star: We like Cha Kang-yoon as Ji-ho, mainly because he’s the amiable friend who seems to want a little more from Seong-a, but is also OK with all of the attention he gets from the other girls in his class.
Most Pilot-y Line: Speaking of the musical cues, the ones we hate the most is hearing “blink blink” sound effects, and they’re used here.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Head Over Heels has an interesting-enough story, and seeing the mystical world around Seong-a is fun enough, to keep viewers’ interest even if the show isn’t as funny as it thinks it is.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.