49 Days
Borrowing a Body for 49 Days
Shin Ji-Hyun’s life seems to be perfect, like a fairytale. She has parents and friends who love and support her and she is getting married soon to her fiancé Kang Min-Ho. Shortly before her wedding she gets into a car accident, which leaves her brain-dead in a deep coma. After her ‘death’ she is welcomed by a Scheduler, someone who schedules when someone has to die. The Scheduler tells her that her death was actually not planned and that she died too early. He offers Ji-Hyun a choice: Either she accepts her early death, or she can try to get back to life and wake up from the coma. To get back to life she has 49 days. In these 49 days Ji-Hyun has to collect tears from three persons who really love her, without the parents, brothers and sisters. For doing that she is allowed to borrow the body of a living person, while the person is asleep. Ji-Hyun accepts the challenge. So she can borrow the body of the Song Lee-Kyung, a suicidal woman, while Lee-Kyung sleeps. Additionally she is not allowed hurt the borrowed body and tell anyone that she is Ji-Hyun. Now Ji-Hyun wanders off in Lee-Kyung’s body trying to find three persons who really care about here.
49 Days (Wikipedia, AsianMediaWiki, Hancinema) is a fantasy drama about love, betrayal, grief and the value of life. The show follows mainly Ji-Hyun in Lee-Kyung’s body as she tries to get back to life. Ji-Hyun is the most naïve character which beliefs that everything is simple and wonderful. Of course she finds out that not everything is as she thought and that people can be really mean to each other. Suddenly getting back to life isn’t priority number one. The story starts quite predictable but gets more and more involving, twisted and interesting.
While 49 Days is a damn fine drama it also has an over-the-top melodramatic and soapy style. It starts with that there is a lot of crying and whining and ends with the cheesy music. Yes, from time to time there’s some comedy relieve, but it is rare.
Also I have to lose a word about the actress who plays Ji-Hyun. Oh my god, she looks like a living Barbie doll, at least in this series. At least it fits for the naïve character of Ji-Hyun.
Well I have very mixed feelings about 49 Days. I really love it, while I hate its over-the-top melodramatic and soapy style. It’s just too much. I prefer if more scenes would have a more ‘cold’ and ‘unemotional’ tone instead of beating on the ‘sadness’-drum. Or even sprinkle a little more comedy in it. But then again, it’s really an awesome drama with a cool story. I think in the end it depends on what you like. For me the good parts over-shine the bad parts.
Anyway, this is the first series which gets two ratings, because I cannot make up my mind =):
Star-O-Meter, if you like soapy stuff: 
(5/5)
Star-O-Meter, if you are allergic to soaps: 
(2/5)
Again, here you can watch two episodes for free and US-citizens can watch all episodes here.
Trailers
Trailer with subs, already completely over-the-top:
Trailer without subs, but less over-the-top: