[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Drama Special - Witch"

What makes this drama interesting isn't so much its actual objective quality, but the unusual context of having a Joseon-era action storyline set in the single hour Drama Special format. In a typical historical drama featuring swordfights and intense equestrian action, there's a lot of stretching of the political material to justify these encounters, mainly because there's only so many fights to the death you can have before a story hits self-parody.

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The combat in "Drama Special - Witch" condenses a lot of this. Almost as soon as a character stumbles upon a piece of plot essential information, something immediately happens that forces some kind of brawl. Some are extended, some are over immediately, but this drama knows that it's got very little time to tell its story and takes the smart approach of giving the audience what it wants instead of lingering too much on the finer points of motivation.

The main disadvantage to this kind of tight scripting is that the fight sequences don't hit the exciting crescendo that the equivalent scenes will get in a longer historical drama. It's obvious that corners are cut here. In the horse fights in particular, it's fairly obvious that editing tricks are being pulled to imply that mounted warriors are face to face when in reality the context and camerawork are only conspiring to create this impression.

The swordfights fare a bit better- as do the performances. This drama features a fairly good one from Lee Chae-Young as the smug noblewoman character type- that's not exactly who she's playing here, but the description is close enough. She does a great job moving the relatively unremarkable story forward and provokes good reactions from the other characters around her. "Drama Special - Witch" recognizes that part of the reason why Joseon action sequences have power is because of the characters filling those events with context. While the manipulation here is limited by the format of the Drama Special, it nonetheless gets the job done.

For the most part "Drama Special - Witch" does what it does effectively. Neither the story nor the action are especially strong, but they're a fairly effective quick fix for someone who just wants to get to the good stuff fast without having to go through all that annoying build-up first. If nothing else it's a good reminder as to why so many viewers are willing to put up with Joseon costume dramas for so long, and it's a good primer for what can be expected from those programs.

Review by William Schwartz

"Drama Special - Witch" is directed by Park Hyeon-seok and written by Chae Seung-dae and features Yu Oh-seong, Lee Dae-yeon, Kim Young-jae and Lee Chae-young.