K-drama Review: Hospital Playlist

Hospital Playlist is a fast-paced medical drama that mixes comedy, romance, and some tearjerking drama into a show that feels incredibly healing to watch (and re-watch!)

English Title: Hospital Playlist (2020)

Writer: Lee Woo-jung

Director: Shin Won-ho

Length: 12 Episodes (Season 1)

Tropes: Medical drama, Found Family, Best Friend's Little Sister, Friends to Lovers, Workplace Romance, Slice-of-life / Year in the Life

My Score: 4/5

Description: This medical drama is a slice-of-life story following five specialist surgeons who work together at the Yulje Medical Centre. Friends since medical school, they also have an unofficial band and make music together in their free time.

If you enjoyed this show, then watch: Dr. Romantic, Doctor Stranger, Doctor Slump, Descendants of the Sun, and Resident Playbook and Prison Playbook (both by the same production company and creative team.) Resident Playbook also features cameos from many of the Hospital Playlist characters.

Despite a slightly disjointed introductory episode, half an hour in I was hooked. Hospital Playlist features a big ensemble cast and, while there are some romantic sub-plots, the focus is very much on the medical cases and everyday lives of surgeons in a big city hospital.

Episode One has the unenviable task of introducing the viewer to the rather large ensemble cast, and there's also some drama around the management succession of the hospital as the Chairman is dying. While it took me a while to identify all the disparate characters and get the plot lines straight (in part because the opening episode is set in two different hospitals) the fast-pace, laugh-out-loud humour, moving emotional scenes, and engaging characters very quickly won me over.

From Episode Two, all the action takes place in the Yulje Medical Centre, where five very different surgeons, friends since medical school, are reunited. Every episode contains multiple interweaving stories and medical cases, occasionally intertwined with flashbacks, which can be a little confusing at times, but never so much that you want to stop binge-watching. Together, the fast pace and slight chaos are very effective at conveying the constant busy-ness of a big hospital and the typical doctor's day.

For me, there were so many things that I think this show did well: its pacing, structure, characters, soundtrack, humour, and, above all, the way it makes the viewer feel.

It took me a hot minute to figure this out, but the overall structure of the show is genius: each episode is one month in the life of the hospital, with the full series of twelve episodes taking place over a year. (And Season 2, which I'll review next, follows the same structure.) 

I'm no medical expert, but the show felt very authentic, from the realities of dealing with patients to the surgeries themselves. The show also tackles some difficult subjects, like miscarriage and stillbirth, loss and grief, and organ donation, amongst others. After my initial viewing, I watched the English dubbed version with my daughter, who loves human biology and wants to study in a related field, and she was fascinated with how they presented the medical information.

Unsurprisingly, since the five main characters play together in a band, music is integral to the story, with each episode featuring a "performance" by the characters. I usually add one or two songs from each show I watch to my Spotify soundtrack playlist, but with this show I added at least ten or twelve. The actors all sing and play the instruments themselves - and they appear to have had a lot of fun doing it! The authentic camaraderie between the actors feels palpable; I'm sure they must have been friends behind-the-scenes too to have such great on-screen chemistry.

The five friends at the centre of the story are all interesting, relatable, believable characters. Even the show's supporting and minor characters feel like well-rounded, flesh-and-blood people. And I dare you not to fall in love with single dad Lee Ik-jun and his adorable son Uju!

The main characters are all entering their 40s and, while they've achieved career success, they're still figuring out life stuff. I love that they're not supporting characters to 20-somethings, but are the main focus of the show. The fact that they're still messy, still just doing their best, despite having already experienced some knocks in life, is so relatable! Their parents also feature in the show, and, again, despite being yet another generation older, they're treated not as background stereotypes, but have their own main character energy. As I get older, I really appreciate shows that don't sideline everyone over the age of thirty-five, and which show that older people still have complex inner lives of their own.

If you've read my past reviews, you know that one of the reasons I find K-dramas so appealing and uplifting is the friendships between characters. While I especially loved the dynamics between the five surgeons at the heart of the story, there are many other friendships and close sibling relationships, so if this is your jam too, I'm sure you'll love this show as much as I did.

It warms my feminist heart that there's a high ratio of female residents and surgeons in this hospital. Women are treated as commonplace in leadership roles, are the equals of their male peers, and are respected, without having to fight for it. The one female member in the group of five friends is also the smartest. She's not only an ambitious, talented neurosurgeon, but she's also kind, down-to-earth and empathetic, too.

As I've said before, Hospital Playlist has binge-worthy pacing. As it's not focused on a single case per episode as so many US medical dramas are (like House or The Good Doctor) we're constantly moving between the interweaving storylines, from one patient to the next, getting glimpses into myriad lives without focusing too long on a single one. As a result, there are no slow episodes and I was engaged every moment of every episode.

Finally, the entire show is imbued with the goodness of humanity, which is what makes it such a healing show to watch. The main characters are good people - principled, ethical, hardworking and kind - without ever feeling like stereotypes. There are no real villains (unlike in Dr. Romantic where the main characters battle against corrupt and greedy superiors,) just ordinary, flawed people. Friends support one another, relationships between the main characters are healthy, and there's very little discrimination or abuse. If anyone behaves badly, it gets called out and addressed. Despite the high emotions you'll experience watching this show, it is never angsty and won't stress you out, so if you're looking for a show that will make you feel lots of emotions without making you anxious, this is the one for you.

My favourite moment? I have rather a lot, but my favourite is perhaps in episode one where the neurosurgeon castigates one of her friends for not telling her sooner that her boyfriend was cheating on her - only for us to later see that he was indeed a true friend because he's the one who pushed the boyfriend to be honest with her and confess. K-dramas are so good at this: showing us a scene from one point of view, then later showing the same scene from a different perspective, or adding more to what we've seen before, giving the viewer a new understanding of what happened. I also love how scenes like these show characters communicating with one another in healthy, honest ways.

So, with so much to love about this show, why haven't I given it a full five stars? It was a very tough decision, and Hospital Playlist probably does deserve five stars, but there are two reasons I opted for one star less:

• As a romance writer and reader, I love stories with a strong central romance. While this one had several romantic sub-plots, it didn't quite give me all the romance "feels" my heart desires. In other words, it's not the show's fault, but mine.
• The ending didn't feel entirely satisfying. Perhaps this was because the writers already knew a second season was coming, but they left a lot of loose ends hanging and only one of the central characters was given a truly satisfying resolution at the end of season one. Though it took two years for viewers to get a second season, I was able to roll straight over into season two (which - spoiler alert! - does give the reader a very satisfying conclusion) and you'll probably want to do the same.

There are many laugh-out-loud funny moments in this show (as well as some deeply moving ones, as any K-drama aficionado would expect) and a lot of "best friends just hanging out and being great friends" moments, so I'm going to leave you with one of my favourite scenes that has a bit of both:

Have you watched Hospital Playlist, and if so, what were your thoughts?