For this week’s drama review we are diving into the highly anticipated production ‘Doom At Your Service’ with an incredible actor line-up and stunning cinematography.
Written by Im Me-a-ri and directed by Kwon Young-il, ‘Doom At Your Service’ is a fantasy/romance production created by tvN, starring Park Bo-young and Seo In-guk.
Tak Dong-kyung (Bo-young) is a smart editor who lives a peaceful life despite her very sad past. She tries her best to go through life and make the best of it. However, she is diagnosed with brain cancer and is given one hundred days of life or one year if she gets surgery for it.
She decides to live her last one hundred days, but she unintentionally summons Myul Mang (In-Guk) after she wholeheartedly wishes for the world to be doomed during his birthday, making the two connect their lives and destiny to one wish he decides to grant her.
Doom and destiny
Myul Mang (aka. Doom) lives between the living and dead, and exists to bring darkness to light and balance the world. After living for centuries with this fate he decides to grant Dong-kyung a wish and signs a one hundred day contract with her.
With a love-hate relationship this duo gets involved emotionally and romantically with each other, despite Doom behaving heartlessly at times, and she being rather harsh with her words at times too.
Their relationship deepens and their feelings grow as they spend more time with each other, but Dong-kyung’s faith is sealed and her life will end, or her most loved person will die instead of her.
A Love Triangle
‘Doom At Your Service’ includes solid side characters with interesting stories and good development. Cha Joo-ik (Lee Soo-hyuk) works in the editorial where Dong-kyung works, his flatmate and best friend Lee Hyun-kyu (Kang Tae-oh) has had a lifelong love interest, but this person happens to be the same girl Joo-ik has been in love with for years.
Na Ji-na (Shin Do-hyun) is Dong-kyung’s best friend and it is also part of a love triangle, including her high school love (Hyun-kyu) and her newly found love interest (Joo-ik).
These three characters had a very interesting development, it can be considered a love triangle, but the way they manage the relationship is mature and very honest making it quite interesting to watch.
As a bonus side character we get SF9’s Dawon as Tak Sun-kyung, he is Dong-kyung’s little brother. Even though he is quite bratty and difficult, he finds the way to become more mature and tries to be with his sister once he finds out about her illness.
Finding the way through the story
‘Doom At Your Service’ started off solidly with a very interesting plot and incredible actors. As expected of In-guk and Bo-young, they delivered a very impressive performance that followed the emotional load needed for the character.
The secondary characters had an interesting storyline touching subjects of letting go and facing new opportunities and welcoming the future, however, the plot became rather slow half-way through, making the story drag out a bit from my point of view.
Nevertheless, ‘Doom At Your Service’ delivered what fans expected. I would have loved it if the drama had kept the pace it had the first couple of episodes, but overall it was an enjoyable watch.
You can watch the trailer below.
