What were the best, worst, funniest, most frustrating dramas in 2020? We polled nearly 150 drama watchers to find out.
The Best
2020 was Hospital Playlist’s year, with the drama taking out both Best and Favourite drama in this year’s poll. It had serious competition, however, from It’s Okay to Not Be Okay (IOTNBO), which remained hot on its heels till the end.
Despite the nail-biting competition, the popular slice of life drama about doctors made it to the finish line first with nearly one fifth of voters (18%) selecting it for both Best and Favourite Drama. IOTNBO was second by only a small margin with 16 per cent and 14 per cent respectively. Hospital Playlist also picked up the award for Best Ensemble with a definitive 40 per cent of the vote and was a strong write-in vote contender for The One That Made You Laugh the Most, despite not being an option in the poll.
As you can see from the proportions, votes in the Favourite Drama category were spread more widely and there was a noteworthy cluster of dramas sitting right below the top two: Memorials/ Into The Ring (10%), A Piece of Your Mind (9%) and I’ll Find You on a Beautiful Day (7%).
Memorials/Into the Ring also garnered an impressive 18 per cent of the vote in The One That Made You Laugh the Most, despite being outdone by Crash Landing On You (29%). Viewers this year were clearly enamoured of Son Ye-jin’s fish-out-of-water antics in North Korea. But they also awarded the show Best Romance (20%) with Memorials/Into The Ring (13%) and Do You Like Brahms (12%) with only one vote between them at second and third. The dimples win again.
From laughter to tears, almost a quarter of this year’s voters (24%) chose the emotional devastation of Hi Bye Mama! as The One That Made You Cry the Most. But it was the supernatural fantasy Mystic Pop-Up Bar (17%) that came from behind A Piece of Your Mind (15%) at the last minute to take out Most Underrated.
While votes were obviously close across a lot of the categories, nothing compares to Best Villain where voters couldn’t decide at all: fast-packed zombie sageuk, Kingdom 2; thriller Flower of Evil; and crime thriller, Forest of Secrets 2 all got 13 per cent of the vote. Decimal places were needed to get the clear winner. And… it’s the zombies in funny hats with one more vote than the others.
Notably, the still-airing Kairos (12%) was also in contention as was the wonderful crime thriller Nobody Knows (11%). With a number of passionate write-in ballots across the categories, it seems that Kairos has a rapidly-expanding fan club and could have ranked more highly in this poll if it had aired earlier in the year.
The Worst
If the result of the Best Drama award was clear, it was even more so for the worst. Ji Chang-wook has managed to sweep the field two years in a row. Last year his universally-panned comeback drama Melting Me Softly got a whopping 46 per cent of the vote for Worst Drama. This year he won again with his second attempt at a comeback drama, Backstreet Rookie (17%). At least this year he had some competition in The King Eternal Monarch (TKEM) (15%) and Forest (13%), which were a very close second and third.
TKEM and Backstreet Rookie also fought it out for Worst Romance with TKEM (16%) nudging out the Rookie (14%) in the end. TKEM also blitzed the field for Most Overrated with a whopping 38 per cent of the vote leaving the second contender, Crash landing On You (23%) in its wake.
And while TKEM (9%) was second in the category for Worst Ending, nothing could rival the epic record-breaking 60 per cent of the vote for romantic comedy Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol. You think your drama has a bad ending, it said, I’ll show you a bad ending. It’s not surprising then that it also won the category for Best Internet Meltdown (32%), although the Dramaland-splitting shipping war in Start-Up meant it came close (31%).
You may think she ended up with the wrong man. But at least he didn’t [SPOILER].
The Most Important Award
It was a difficult decision we forced you to make but you made it.
I can finally reveal that Forest won the inaugural (only) award for Best Clam* with over 40% of the vote.
The Results
How did your favourites fare? Did democracy work again?
Best Drama
Hospital Playlist
Special Mention: It’s Okay to Not Be Okay; Someday Or One Day (which picked up a write-in ballot despite not being Korean)
Author’s Pick: Forest of Secrets/ Stranger 2
Favourite Drama
Hospital Playlist
Special Mention: It’s Okay to Not Be Okay
Author’s Pick: School Nurse Files (and if you want to know why read my love letter to it on Fangirlverdict)
Worst Show
Backstreet Rookie
Special Mention: The King: Eternal Monarch
Author’s Pick: Meow, the Secret Boy
Most Underrated
Mystic Pop-Up Bar
Special Mention: A Piece of Your Mind
Author’s Pick: School Nurse Files
Most Overrated
The King: Eternal Monarch
Author’s Pick: Crash Landing on You
The One That Made You Laugh The Most
Crash Landing On You
Author’s Pick: Zombie Detective
The One That Made You Cry The Most
Hi Bye Mama!
Author’s Pick: A Piece of Your Mind
The One With the Best Villain
Kingdom 2
Author’s Pick: Nobody Knows
The One With the Best Romance
Crash Landing On You
Author’s Pick: A Piece of Your Mind
The One With the Best Ensemble Cast
Hospital Playlist
Author’s Pick: Black Dog
The One With the Best Breakout Performance
Kim Seon-ho (Start-Up)
Author’s Pick: Ahn Ji-ho (Nobody Knows)
The One With the Worst Ending
Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol
Author’s Pick: I haven’t seen the drama and even I know it’s the worst ending
The One With the Best Internet Meltdown
Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol
Special Mention: Start-Up
Author’s Pick: I’m surprised there’s an internet left standing after that meltdown
The One With the Worst Romance
The King: Eternal Monarch
Author’s Pick: Too many to chose from this year, I don’t know where to start
The One with the Best Clam!*
Forest
Author’s Pick: Forest
*What’s with the clams? I’m sorry to all my readers who do not lurk about Dramabeans but I’m afraid this is a bit of an in joke. The funny thing though is that there really were a weird number of clams this year. The female lead in Forest found some in a freshwater lake, the leads in Crash Landing on You dined on them. In the end they became a way of saying a drama made no sense (only the clams know, the clams know everything). Thank you for bearing with us as we have our fun. And thanks for reading!
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