[HanCinema's News] Dramas From 2021 Only Just Now Appearing in 2024

The end of "Serendipity's Embrace" on August 13th on tvN put an end to an unusually long production cycle for the drama, which began filming in November of 2022 and finished all the way back in February of 2023. Curiously enough, "Serendipity's Embrace" isn't even the longest delayed drama to appear in August. "Bad Memory Eraser" only started airing on MBC on August 2nd, yet started its filming back in September of 2021, finishing in February of 2022.

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The curious situation isn't exclusive to cable networks either. "Black Out" on MBC was filmed in September of 2021 and continued all the way until June of 2022. All of these dramas simply languished in warehouses for the past two years. But why? The answer has to do with the drama market of 2021-2022. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic greatly strengthening streaming platforms, there was a big market for dramas which obtained many investors.

But as it happened, there were more dramas in production than there was quite enough demand among streaming platforms to actually buy them. So it is that these three titles lagged so far behind their production dates. Netflix in particular also ended up producing much of their exclusive content in-house, developing their own focus on cinematic style action thrillers. Consequently, a streaming platform with "All of Us Are Dead" and "Narco-Saints" had little use for "Bad Memory Eraser" as a romantic comedy.

All of this took place during a time period where television dramas have decreased in quantity. While 2014 saw the production of 117 television dramas across all networks, that number fell to 94 by 2020 and there are only 63 such projects this year. Sports programming and variety programming tends to be cheaper to produce, and these dramas only become affordable enough to compete when they've been locked up long enough they're soon unlikely to receive any release at all.

Even the presence of stars like Chae Jong-hyeop and Lee Jong-won-I can only go so far. Ironically, the main impetus for shows like "Serendipity's Embrace" getting a delayed release may have been the international market- international companies like Rakuten Viki that are interested in the dramas can't stream them until they have some form of domestic release first. And as always, popular K-drama trends inside South Korea itself don't necessarily match those in the rest of the world.

Written by William Schwartz