10 First Loves - (longer) Thai
13 Feb 2026 02:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elisheva_mWritten for Stuff I Love, Challenge 2
The thematic approach illustrated by favourite movies which I used for the first week didn't work so well for series and lakorns - the longer format ensures a lot of variations. My first week post is here Things I love about two hour Thai movies
So this has become a reverse variation - using favourites to talk about some of the commonalities and structured where possible in terms of first loves. In part as a way of narrowing down my choices into something manageable =D
(am tired, will come back later to edit, add links to titles and erase myself so it's more acceptable)
Thai storytelling. There are many ways in which Thai ways with a story are different from elsewhere - emphasis on emotion rather than event-driven plots; fluidity of tone and genre; how they mitigate stress and big emotions with warmth and kindness.
Moonlight Chicken - New to me genre and country after happening onto a recommendation by chance. Gave BL more credit for what I love in it when it's really the Thai and the quality of attention they give to emotions.
For those of us with regrets, or who've gotten stuck in life, it's excellent work, these intertwined stories of loss and healing set amongst found family.
(Also directed by Aof - He's Coming to Me)
Intelligent Thai youth series and coming of age. The warmth, kindness, acceptance and generosity of heart that is so much a part of Thai stories pairs so well with youth series. Often with a lot of respect for the intelligence of their young characters and audiences. For this, will choose
The Shipper - madcap, outrageous and outrageously good. The way it flips our understanding of a central character on its head for each of the first four episodes is fantastic story-craft. It is also very, very funny. Before the opening credits, it visually pairs stigmata on a church statue with girls' hentai nosebleeds. Did I mention outrageous? =D
Thai PBS. Reliably earnest and progressive. A very occasional clunker, mostly good in its reliable sort of way. And sometimes it is superb.
The Broken Us - This is the one I think everyone should see - it is that good - but hesitate to recommend to anyone specifically because of the subject matter. But for all the difficulty of the material, it is handled with such delicacy, warmth and kindness.
(Also Bussaba Lui Fai)
Mae Nak adaptations - Two years ago I set out to watch as many film adaptations of the Mae Nak legend as I could find (current count is 7), primarily out of interest in the different ways filmmakers find to tell stories. And it has been good for that - every version finds its own way to move our emotions, chiefly in the endings, some of which make a very different kind of sense if you know the story. But mostly what I’ve come away with, and continue to find, is how much love Thais have for Nak, Mak and their love.
Nang Nak (1999) is the clearest, most straightforward retelling of the legend currently available on the internet. It is the one to start with.
Pee Mak is a comedy-horror adaptation. It stands alone well but there are layers of humour you'll miss if you haven't seen Nang Nak first.
LAKORNS!!!
Khun Chaai (To Sir, With Love) was my first lakorn (one31) and it remains one of the best-crafted I’ve seen. I saw it at a time when I was giving up on the rapid fire stress roller coasters of K-drama and the longer, drawn out ones of C-dramas - and I found it thrilling rather than exhausting, full of zip and zing and interspersed with comedic moments. It works better for me.
Women-centred historical lakorns
It is also very much a story about women. Complicated, determined women using whatever resources they can find to negotiate life within the constraints of cultural sexism, struggling for agency in a time and place which demanded they be defined solely by their relationships with men, whether sons or husbands.
And today, some 80 years after it was set, western viewers continue to do just that, defining the lakorn solely in terms of its romance between men. How far we've come, eh?
Historical lakorns criticise out-dated attitudes whilst also mining them for melodrama and showing the difficulties they cause. They are a rich source of women's stories and finding new ways to make space to write women back into history.
Bussaba Lui Fai is a gentle Thai PBS historical, set mostly in 1836 and centered around arts (poetry, literature, painting, dance and music), while also clearly speaking out against sexism and ethnic discrimination as the two leads struggle in their pursuit of their respective arts. It's both a love story between artists - poet and painter - and a love story to Thailand's rich cultural and artistic history.
My love-(assortment of negative emotions) relationship with Ch 3 lakorns
A year's subscription to Ch3+ (easy done at £22/year) and their list of lakorns with English subs on the platform lead to plowing through ones with unpromising starts which I ended up adoring and bouncing off of others I loved at the beginning. They mix tones throughout and will probably change significantly along the way, it's just how they roll.
It also showed me many different writers and directors grappling with how to address women's desire and sexual agency in a conservative country negotiating social change with itself. And that became the catalyst for my novel.
Lakorns always include women's stories.
Sroi Sabunnga (A Tale of Ylang Ylang) - a lakorn of two halves, both of which I loved for very different reasons
Game Prattana (Rivalry) - first 3rd, why am I watching this, the rest - very glad I did
Thai supernatural - Thais often have a different way of working with supernatural themes. Labels like 'horror' often don't fit, not in the way many elsewhere expect.
Enigma - tight, compact storytelling with brilliant use of sound, lighting, acting and well-contextualised props make for excellent story-craft centered around smart, resourceful and determined high school girls (Forget the sequel though, that's the equivalent of social media - a surfeit of small things formatted to grab attention and evoke big emotional reactions without taking the time to explore or understand them. They took everything they did from the first, and didn't do them.)
Isaan & mor lam - Isaan is the Northeast province of Thailand, the source of some fantastic horror, comedy-horror and raucous comedy movies, along with mor lam. I'll give two hours to pretty much anything Thai with mor lam for their exuberant freedom and energy.
Nha Harn has less of that, but it gave an excellent grounding in the mor lam music scene and what it means to young people in rural Isaan. The series isn't shiny or polished but offers instead a compelling raw vibrancy.
Tone shifts & freedom from genre limitations - In looking back to find an early love for this, the first ones which stood out were those where I was bothered by it like He's Coming to Me with its brief drop into lakorn or the last episodes of Astrophile.There's nothing I can point to when it suddenly clicked, or maybe I've just forgotten that moment. But somehow it came to be something I treasure. They can, and will use, whatever tone best contributes to the emotions they are after. If you are a writer, unless you are catering to (western) genre expectations and their constraints, getting this way of telling a story into your options is so freeing. What does this need at this moment? How do we bring it in and take it back out to shift into something else? It is fantastic.
So two which stand-out as clear examples:
Midnight Motel
The Death of Khun Phra (Thai PBS)
(and if you want to see it clearly and exuberantly in a short amount of time - Tears of the Black Tiger)
Trauma wrapped in comedy - This freedom lets Thai directors do this fascinating thing of embedding trauma and grief narratives in much lighter content. It's not like western fare, where trauma narratives have to be dark, heavy and depressing. If you watch Thai series, it is very much worth learning how to stay open to it and recognise it when it's in play. Every series I've seen finds a different way to do it too.
A Boss and a Babe - an irrepressible force of nature hides his own pain by making everyone laugh. The man he falls in love with has things of his own he doesn't want to talk about. The back story behind both is leaked out gently, and always keeps coming back to the caring and support they give each other. It's not the best series by far, but it's a great example of this.
The much maligned Tonhon Chonlatee hides its trauma narrative more deeply. It leaves it to viewers to put two pieces together, but once they click into place....
I'm Tee, Me Too; if you watch much Thai you may well have come across it already.
And this circles back round to Moonlight Chicken and its gorgeous ability to cradle pain, both its characters' and ours, if we let it. There's a genius in that, to make space for emotions in their difficulty and complexity, while also wrapping them in that beautiful Thai warmth, kindness and acceptance.
The thematic approach illustrated by favourite movies which I used for the first week didn't work so well for series and lakorns - the longer format ensures a lot of variations. My first week post is here Things I love about two hour Thai movies
So this has become a reverse variation - using favourites to talk about some of the commonalities and structured where possible in terms of first loves. In part as a way of narrowing down my choices into something manageable =D
(am tired, will come back later to edit, add links to titles and erase myself so it's more acceptable)
Thai storytelling. There are many ways in which Thai ways with a story are different from elsewhere - emphasis on emotion rather than event-driven plots; fluidity of tone and genre; how they mitigate stress and big emotions with warmth and kindness.
Moonlight Chicken - New to me genre and country after happening onto a recommendation by chance. Gave BL more credit for what I love in it when it's really the Thai and the quality of attention they give to emotions.
For those of us with regrets, or who've gotten stuck in life, it's excellent work, these intertwined stories of loss and healing set amongst found family.
(Also directed by Aof - He's Coming to Me)
Intelligent Thai youth series and coming of age. The warmth, kindness, acceptance and generosity of heart that is so much a part of Thai stories pairs so well with youth series. Often with a lot of respect for the intelligence of their young characters and audiences. For this, will choose
The Shipper - madcap, outrageous and outrageously good. The way it flips our understanding of a central character on its head for each of the first four episodes is fantastic story-craft. It is also very, very funny. Before the opening credits, it visually pairs stigmata on a church statue with girls' hentai nosebleeds. Did I mention outrageous? =D
Thai PBS. Reliably earnest and progressive. A very occasional clunker, mostly good in its reliable sort of way. And sometimes it is superb.
The Broken Us - This is the one I think everyone should see - it is that good - but hesitate to recommend to anyone specifically because of the subject matter. But for all the difficulty of the material, it is handled with such delicacy, warmth and kindness.
(Also Bussaba Lui Fai)
Mae Nak adaptations - Two years ago I set out to watch as many film adaptations of the Mae Nak legend as I could find (current count is 7), primarily out of interest in the different ways filmmakers find to tell stories. And it has been good for that - every version finds its own way to move our emotions, chiefly in the endings, some of which make a very different kind of sense if you know the story. But mostly what I’ve come away with, and continue to find, is how much love Thais have for Nak, Mak and their love.
Nang Nak (1999) is the clearest, most straightforward retelling of the legend currently available on the internet. It is the one to start with.
Pee Mak is a comedy-horror adaptation. It stands alone well but there are layers of humour you'll miss if you haven't seen Nang Nak first.
LAKORNS!!!
Khun Chaai (To Sir, With Love) was my first lakorn (one31) and it remains one of the best-crafted I’ve seen. I saw it at a time when I was giving up on the rapid fire stress roller coasters of K-drama and the longer, drawn out ones of C-dramas - and I found it thrilling rather than exhausting, full of zip and zing and interspersed with comedic moments. It works better for me.
Women-centred historical lakorns
It is also very much a story about women. Complicated, determined women using whatever resources they can find to negotiate life within the constraints of cultural sexism, struggling for agency in a time and place which demanded they be defined solely by their relationships with men, whether sons or husbands.
And today, some 80 years after it was set, western viewers continue to do just that, defining the lakorn solely in terms of its romance between men. How far we've come, eh?
Historical lakorns criticise out-dated attitudes whilst also mining them for melodrama and showing the difficulties they cause. They are a rich source of women's stories and finding new ways to make space to write women back into history.
Bussaba Lui Fai is a gentle Thai PBS historical, set mostly in 1836 and centered around arts (poetry, literature, painting, dance and music), while also clearly speaking out against sexism and ethnic discrimination as the two leads struggle in their pursuit of their respective arts. It's both a love story between artists - poet and painter - and a love story to Thailand's rich cultural and artistic history.
My love-(assortment of negative emotions) relationship with Ch 3 lakorns
A year's subscription to Ch3+ (easy done at £22/year) and their list of lakorns with English subs on the platform lead to plowing through ones with unpromising starts which I ended up adoring and bouncing off of others I loved at the beginning. They mix tones throughout and will probably change significantly along the way, it's just how they roll.
It also showed me many different writers and directors grappling with how to address women's desire and sexual agency in a conservative country negotiating social change with itself. And that became the catalyst for my novel.
Lakorns always include women's stories.
Sroi Sabunnga (A Tale of Ylang Ylang) - a lakorn of two halves, both of which I loved for very different reasons
Game Prattana (Rivalry) - first 3rd, why am I watching this, the rest - very glad I did
Thai supernatural - Thais often have a different way of working with supernatural themes. Labels like 'horror' often don't fit, not in the way many elsewhere expect.
Enigma - tight, compact storytelling with brilliant use of sound, lighting, acting and well-contextualised props make for excellent story-craft centered around smart, resourceful and determined high school girls (Forget the sequel though, that's the equivalent of social media - a surfeit of small things formatted to grab attention and evoke big emotional reactions without taking the time to explore or understand them. They took everything they did from the first, and didn't do them.)
Isaan & mor lam - Isaan is the Northeast province of Thailand, the source of some fantastic horror, comedy-horror and raucous comedy movies, along with mor lam. I'll give two hours to pretty much anything Thai with mor lam for their exuberant freedom and energy.
Nha Harn has less of that, but it gave an excellent grounding in the mor lam music scene and what it means to young people in rural Isaan. The series isn't shiny or polished but offers instead a compelling raw vibrancy.
Tone shifts & freedom from genre limitations - In looking back to find an early love for this, the first ones which stood out were those where I was bothered by it like He's Coming to Me with its brief drop into lakorn or the last episodes of Astrophile.There's nothing I can point to when it suddenly clicked, or maybe I've just forgotten that moment. But somehow it came to be something I treasure. They can, and will use, whatever tone best contributes to the emotions they are after. If you are a writer, unless you are catering to (western) genre expectations and their constraints, getting this way of telling a story into your options is so freeing. What does this need at this moment? How do we bring it in and take it back out to shift into something else? It is fantastic.
So two which stand-out as clear examples:
Midnight Motel
The Death of Khun Phra (Thai PBS)
(and if you want to see it clearly and exuberantly in a short amount of time - Tears of the Black Tiger)
Trauma wrapped in comedy - This freedom lets Thai directors do this fascinating thing of embedding trauma and grief narratives in much lighter content. It's not like western fare, where trauma narratives have to be dark, heavy and depressing. If you watch Thai series, it is very much worth learning how to stay open to it and recognise it when it's in play. Every series I've seen finds a different way to do it too.
A Boss and a Babe - an irrepressible force of nature hides his own pain by making everyone laugh. The man he falls in love with has things of his own he doesn't want to talk about. The back story behind both is leaked out gently, and always keeps coming back to the caring and support they give each other. It's not the best series by far, but it's a great example of this.
The much maligned Tonhon Chonlatee hides its trauma narrative more deeply. It leaves it to viewers to put two pieces together, but once they click into place....
I'm Tee, Me Too; if you watch much Thai you may well have come across it already.
And this circles back round to Moonlight Chicken and its gorgeous ability to cradle pain, both its characters' and ours, if we let it. There's a genius in that, to make space for emotions in their difficulty and complexity, while also wrapping them in that beautiful Thai warmth, kindness and acceptance.
