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| Actress Lee Hye-ri in a scene from MBC fantasy rom-com series "May I Help You," which premiered Wednesday / Courtesy of MBC |
By Lee Gyu-lee
MBC's new fantasy romantic-comedy series, "May I Help You," starring singer-actors Lee Hye-ri and Lee Jun-young, has kicked off this week, telling an emotional story topped with comedy.
Led by Sim So-yeon, who directed the rom-com series, "Welcome 2 Life" (2019), the series revolves around a funeral director, Baek Dong-ju (Lee Hye-ri), who has a special ability to see dead people.
Using her ability, she communicates with her deceased clients to help grant their last wishes as she prepares for their funerals.
The series' first two episodes, aired on Wednesday and Thursday, followed Dong-ju helping her deceased clients with their requests, from exposing an affair between the deceased's husband and friend to finding a long-lost son.
They also showed a rough encounter between Kim Jib-sa (Lee Jun-young), who works at an errand service, and Dong-ju, getting off on the wrong foot when Jib-sa delivers her boyfriend's message to break up.
The two keep running into each other with Jib-sa unintentionally helping Dong-ju with finding the son of her deceased client. It premiered with a 3.9-percent viewership rating.
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| A scene from the series, "May I Help You" / Courtesy of MBC |
The series' director said that it will have a mix of heartwarming drama and romantic comedy, built out of the fantasy genre.
"The series started with the question, 'If you were to have one last wish, what would it be?'" the director said during an online press conference for the series, Wednesday.
"The series has its foundation in the fantasy genre, but it has a very realistic story about people who have to say goodbye to their loved ones and a sweet romance story of a man and woman who witness the boundary between life and death," Sim said.
Although the series revolves around Dong-ju dealing with different stories of the deceased, Sim said she tried to set a rather bright tone throughout the story.
"I tried not to depict death as a depressing, forever goodbye. This was something that I discussed with the actors as well. I tried to take a different approach," she said.
Actress Lee Hye-ri said that she fell for her character's heroic abilities. "She is an everyday girl. But after she chooses to become a funeral director, she comes to have this heroic side. Her clients are already dead so they can't do anything. So how she helps them and goes through struggles to grant their wishes makes her interesting," she said.
"At first I thought it was a fantasy series but I came to realize how close the stories are to our real lives. It felt that the series weaves those two factors together very well," she said.
Lee Jun-young noted that he often got emotional as he played his character through the story.
"When I first read the script, I really wanted to take part because it was very heartwarming," he said. "There were a lot of times that I would get choked up with emotion while filming. I hope the viewers might get the same feeling from watching the series."
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