Belladonna

A pretty decent legal drama. Though like idk if I want to call it a legal drama. Honestly, legal stuff is like... 5% of the show. (Almost to the point where the main character could have been a private investigator instead of a lawyer and it would not have changed much.) It's more accurate to call it a fantasy drama.

The main character, Shin I-rang, is a lawyer who has struggled to get hired by a law firm due to the fact that his deceased father was a disgraced prosecutor. So he decides to open his own practice and the office he rents happens to have formerly been a shaman's house. Fantasy shenanigans happen and I-rang can see ghosts who are tied to the various talismans on the wall that the shaman left behind. He helps the ghosts resolve their resentments so that they can pass on. During some of his early cases, he comes into conflict with Na-hyeon. Later, of course, they come to work together and he helps her resolve some of her own past trauma. A solid enough concept and structure for a show.

Oh this drama was... chef's kiss. SO good. A lot of a historical dramas (especially ones loosely based on real figures) fail to end in a satisfactory way, but To My Beloved Thief managed to absolutely nail the ending. Yes, it is weird that there were 2 Joseon era dramas with body switching released a few months apart, but both are very good and honestly they're actually pretty different!

The leads have great chemistry and are both individually compelling characters. The drama also does a really good job of filling the world with characters that develop the setting into something beyond just a backdrop for the leads to act out their love story. Eun-jo is a commoner (born to a nobleman father but a commoner mother, so her status is that of her mother) who works as a female physician and is the family's main source of income after her father was stripped of his position and possessions by the king. She sees the struggles of those around her and at night she becomes a Robin Hood type figure, stealing from the granaries of the nobles to give rice to those who need it. Yeol is a grand prince, the younger brother of the current king. In order to stay out of the line of fire of the volatile king, he puts on a roguish playboy type persona and spends his time doing stuff like playing detective at the Royal Bureau of Investigation... where he takes on the case of a thief who has been stealing from the granaries of nobles.... DUN DUN DUN. We all see where this is going.

This was cute!! The concept of a 21st century Korea as a constitutional monarchy is DEF an intriguing premise and I do think the show succeeded on making that idea come to life. The set up is the Huiju is the illegitimate daughter of the chairperson of a massive conglomerate. She's a successful CEO, but is prevented from reaching the highest echelons of society because of her commoner status. To solve this problem, she sets her sights on marrying Grand Prince I-an, who is currently serving as regent for his young nephew. There is court intrigue. Contract marriages leading to true love. And so on. It's an enjoyable ride! Maybe not the best drama of all time, but fun!

It wasn't perfect because I do think that the drama kinda was trying to be too much at once leading to a slightly unfocused feel. Like the final episode, which is all about abolishing the monarchy, is a little out of left field. Not completely, but it still felt like a sharp left turn because the previous episodes hadn't really seemed concerned with the role of the monarchy in the modern day. And idk if it fully landed? Like I think the show did explore how it's damaging to those IN the monarchy and how monarchy create social classes that exclude people. But idk idk. It didn't quite feel earned, you know?