A World of Asian "Boys Love" Drama

2020 Thai BL series Why R U The Series brings back adorable Love By Chance actor Saint to our screens, and boy have we missed him! He's the biggest drawcard here, and definitely the top reason for watching Why R U in the first place. So is it worth watching? Summary: University students and siblings Zon and Zol have a teasing rivalry. When Zon realises that Zol is writing BL stories about him being in an imaginary relationship with his nemesis Saifah, he insists that she delete them. She cheekily asks him to swear that he doesn't have conflicting feelings about Saifah (she saw them share an accidental kiss during a fight). He hesitates, but he swears to it anyway. Bad move! His obvious lie throws him into an upside-down BL alternate universe, where Zol's BL story about him looks like it's coming true, and he starts hallucinating some very famous BL characters. Meanwhile, Zon's friend Tutor starts to struggle in his own lifelong platonic friendship with beautiful p...

2019 Thai BL series TharnType The Series is a prequel to game-changer Love By Chance, so it has high expectations to live up to. It focuses on soccer team manager Type when he was a university freshman, and his gradual realisation that he's in love with a man. Played by Earth Pirapet, Type was my favourite character in Love By Chance; impatient, crass and blunt but also kind and generous, I loved him for his unconditional support of his friends and teammates, and for being a loving partner. It was a minor role with very little to do, so creating a prequel around him to develop his character better is already a winning decision. MINOR SPOILERS WARNING for the end of this review. Summary: University freshman Type is horrified when he hears a rumour that his new roommate Tharn is gay. An unrepentant homophobe, he wants Tharn out of the dorm room as soon as possible, so he sets about finding ways to torture Tharn with annoyances that range from pettiness to vandalism. Shaken by Typ...

The latest instalment for HIStory season 3, called Make Our Days Count (MODC), is a marked improvement on Trapped, though still not up to the high standard of other sub-series in season two. It's a high-school BL drama, with a distinct preference for keeping it young and light-hearted but with just enough seriousness to give it some sense and purpose. Summary: Top student Yu Shigu has had a difficult life. After his parents died in a car accident when he was younger, his aunt had taken him but she has been struggling financially ever since. With the idea of making his relatives' lives as easy as possible, Yu Shigu studies extremely hard at school and works part time, hoping for a scholarship to university. When we meet him just before exams, his health is deteriorating rapidly because he has been pushing himself too hard. He keeps himself almost completely separate from all the other pupils, which makes him appear haughty and unapproachable. When rebellious layabout Xiang Hao...

It's interesting to note that the highly original Taiwanese BL melodrama The Ambiguous Focus is in fact a sequel to Kinematics Theory. Can this predecessor be even more fascinating than the sequel? Summary: Childhood friends Zhang Zhe and Zhang Nan study mathematics at the same university but they are completely alienated from each other and fight constantly. On the surface, Nan is an arrogant bully, content to rely on his good looks, amazing physique (and goddamn, yes, it is indeed amazing) and his swimming prowess to get by in life. Zhe is a bookish nerd and top student but he's too introverted to make friends. But these boys are longtime friends and understand each other much better than their personalities suggest. Zhe sees Nan's morality and desire for independence under the cocky bluster, and Nan knows he can rely on Zhe's support and loyalty through any difficulty. They soon come to a truce and agree to help each other out. Their mutual support and reliance hel...

Openly gay Korean director Leesong Hee-il's revisits LGBT themes from his other movies, such as blog favourite No Regret, in his 2014 film Night Flight. His portrayal of gay experience from a uniquely Korean perspective and distinctive direction makes his work highly watchable. But his warping of his stories under the magnifying glass of the strictures of Korean society can make his fatalistic view of homophobia and anti-gay violence tough to stomach at times. Night Flight is monumentally grim, despite its deceptively pretty BL-style high school promotional poster, but it's no less riveting for that. Summary: Three friends since junior high are now in senior school, but they are steadily growing apart. Yong-Ju is secretly gay and tries to keep a low profile, hoping to cruise through school more or less unnoticed by the bullies and bad teachers, not liked but not disliked either. He's had a crush on strong, silent Gi-Woong ever since junior high, but they are now completel...

A new HIStory series is about the closest thing that BL fans have to mandatory viewing. Each sub-series has an original spin on the usual BL tropes, and they're generally well-made, well-written and have great casts. The latest instalment, 2019's Trapped, has all of this and more, on paper. So has its great promise and hype translated into another top-tier series? Summary: Policeman Shao Fei has been obsessed for years with finding definitive evidence that gangster Tang Yi was implicated in the murder of both Tang Yi's own gangster mentor and Shao Fei's colleague police officer. He tracks Tang Yi relentlessly, following him everywhere and accosting him in public. This gets him into trouble with his boss and Internal Affairs on numerous occasions. Tang Yi is trying to 'clean up' his gang by removing it from the drugs trade. This draws the attention of other local gangs who suspect his motives, and suddenly Tang Yi and his sister find themselves in danger. Shao ...

I was drawn to watch new Thai series Kiss Me Again solely on the basis of the actor Newwiee, one of my BL favourites and a fun charismatic performer. He didn't disappoint, although that's about the limit of the interest to be found in this series. It's a prequel to 2016 drama Kiss The Series. Summary: A disparate group of five university students unite together as friends. Two of the boys in the group, bad boy Pete and intelligent sensitive Kao, don't tell the others that they know each other better than they are letting on. They hate each other, after a series of violent incidents that has set them at odds. One of these incidents ended up with them accidentally kissing. While it's clear that Kao wants to talk about his confused feelings for Pete after the kiss, Pete pushes him away angrily, leading to more violence. Their friends eventually realise that something is wrong between Pete and Kao, leading Pete to lash out at Kao even more violently and destroy the gr...

I'm going to cheat here and leave Asia, to pick up a French film I really enjoyed recently, Being 17 , directed by the master of teenage sexual awakening, André Techiné. The film is currently available on Netflix. Summary: The story focuses on a year in the life of two isolated unpopular high school students, intelligent Damien and sullen withdrawn Thomas, living in a small town in southwestern France. They detest each other without really understanding why, and regularly get into fistfights. When Thomas's mother falls ill, the local doctor - who also happens to be Damien's mother, Marianne - attends to her. This connection between the two families eventually sees the two boys thrown into each other's company more often, increasing the violence. Thomas's grades at school rapidly deteriorate, not helped by him having to commute three hours a day for school. Marianne proposes a solution that horrifies both boys: Thomas can come and live with her and Damien in town u...

If I have a guilty pleasure when it comes to BL, it's Chinese series Advance Bravely . How can something so slight and vacuous be so entertaining? Summary: Xia Yao is a young and supremely beautiful waif, from a very wealthy, very powerful family. He used to be a ladies man but he's recently become more solitary and stay-at-home, earning him the nickname 'The Monk', which he loathes. He is pursued relentlessly by the 'goddess' Yuan Ru, whom he rejects repeatedly to no effect. She is entirely unfazed by anything he dishes out at her and will stop at nothing till she marries him. She enlists the help of her older brother Yuan Zong, a highly skilled former special forces soldier who now operates his own successful bodyguard business. The brother and sister are from a very different background to Yao, having grown up poor and then left motherless at a young age, with Zong having to take on the responsibilities of raising his baby sister. He obviously knows well hi...

So now it's time to step back into what I consider a more standard BL drama - the Thai series SOTUS . Summary: Handsome intelligent Kongpop begins his freshman year at a university, majoring in Engineering. A clan of Engineering seniors soon enforces a strict oppressive regime of hazing, ritualised gatherings and discipline on the new students. The main hazer Arthit is particularly brutal. Kongpop, horrified by the pointless cruelty, rebels against the seniors and vocally opposes them at their gatherings, sometimes even mocking them. This incenses Arthit, who singles Kongpop out for ongoing humiliation and punishment. Kongpop soon sees the point of the hazing and what the senior hazers are trying to achieve. As his rebellious behaviour mellows, he also begins to reconsider his feelings towards Arthit. He delivers sweet compliments to Arthit very casually, and which soon increase and intensify. Arthit is mortified and pushes Kongpop away repeatedly. Can Kongpop convince Arthit tha...

I'm not entirely sure but, after having thought about it,  HIStory: Stay Away From Me (HSAFM) was probably the first BL drama I watched. Summary of the plot: Two guys become step brothers and are forced to live together when their respective parents get married and go on an extended honeymoon. One of them Feng He is sensitive, intelligent, gay and shy, the other Cheng Qing is a very famous star with pretty boy looks who is vain, arrogant and a bully. They don't hit it off and their life together in their flat becomes increasingly difficult. Eventually they each being to see the good points in each other, which soon turns into unanticipated feelings. I didn't really enjoy this series at the time, though I kept up with watching all the episodes until the end, but I see now that it was probably a really good introduction to BL. It has a lot of the elements of the BL formula and uses most of them well. It's not particularly original or well made, but the production and...