this is watch list post exam. I hope I survive my exams.

Dangerous romance was such a badly written and directed.

WKA, my friend! Thanks for the ask!

If I may overgeneralize your question: I think there are certain technical aspects I look for in any show. I love shows from everywhere in Asia -- Thailand, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, etc. -- and I know that each of these countries has certain filming styles, certain dramatic construction styles (like the Thai lakorns, the Japanese asadoras and taigas, etc.) that they'll stick to for the kind of show they are creating, and certain takes on well-known genres, like South Korea's K-dramatic takes on romance, for instance.

I think for me, the technical aspect that is the most important for me of any show is how sophisticated the screenplay is. I may go so far as to say that while I like a direct story, while I recognize that a successful story has a beginning-middle-end framework -- that I am probably a snob for screenplays that mess with that, and still end up with a successful story and ending. I like when a narrative framework gets successfully messy, if that makes sense.

For instance, I recently rewatched A Tale of Thousand Stars for my Old GMMTV Challenge project. ATOTS was the first drama I watched by Aof Noppharnach. He's my fave showmaker now. But back then, when I had very little familiarity with Thai dramas in particular (I believe my first watch of ATOTS was fall of 2022) -- I wasn't exactly sure what made ATOTS great, comparatively, with other dramas from its same field.

And now I know. ATOTS in particular leaned VERY heavily on flashbacks. We see in a later show like Double Savage, flashbacks being used annoyingly and not at all successfully by way of contributions to a sewn-up narrative. It was like, in Double Savage, the flashbacks were only used to try to create drama, where there didn't need to be artificial drama at all.

The flashbacks never felt artificial in ATOTS. Were there A LOT of flashbacks? Could some of them have been made more linear to the narrative? Definitely. But considering that our two protagonists, Phupha and Tian, were REMARKABLY bad communicators in ATOTS -- to use flashbacks as a means of the characters communicating to US their inner thoughts and feelings ended up being useful. P'Aof was deft in using this device, and used them successfully.