The Best Hit

The Best Hit certainly wasn't perfect, but it's one of my favourite shows of the year for sure. From the first mention of the show, as the next variety drama, I was interested, and later when the first teasers came out and I realised it was a time travel drama I was thrilled.

The Best Hit stars the unstoppable Yoon Shi-yoon as Yoo Hyun-jae, who hurtles twenty years forward in time on the night of the fateful typhoon, leaving his massive pop star legacy behind. In the present, he discovers the lives of the people he knew irreversibly changed. Hyun-jae discovers that in the past he disappeared, presumed dead, and the people around him became worse for it. He has no choice but to resume life in this  strange new world, and becomes part of a new generation. However, Hyun-jae also has to unravel a mystery of his past if he ever wants to return and fix things.

Firstly, I guess a short history lesson is in order. In 2015, Producer aired as the first 'variety-drama', supposed to combine variety and drama elements. The story was initially structured like a mockumentary, but this style was quickly abandoned when the drama was met with poor ratings. PD Yoo Ho-jin of variety show 2 Days 1 Night decided he wanted to try again, and Cha Tae-hyun (an actor who starred in Producer) took up the challenge of directing The Best Hit alongside him as well as co-starring.
  I have to say this was not a variety drama. Aside from the throwbacks to nineties Korean pop culture and the little references to variety shows, it was pretty standard in structure. The plot, of course, was completely out of this world.
  The best thing about the The Best Hit is the unrelenting comedy. It is absolutely absurd and hilarious, which makes it a breezy and easy watch. Time travel is a wonderful plot device which is usually comedic gold. In Rooftop Prince, it was the divide between the past and present which made the show's antics funny. In The Best Hit, the comedy comes from how Hyun-jae is modern enough to kind of fit in, but is outdated and treated like an oddball despite being the epitome of cool in his timeline.
  Towards the end of The Best Hit, it had become clear that the writers had no idea what they were doing with the time travel logic, but regardless of how little sense the conclusion made, Yoon Shi-yoon's award-worthy performance helped it to have an unexpected emotional punch. Yoon Shi-yoon was honestly the greatest, the show would have paled in comparison without him - I love the energy he puts into his characters, and he ran away with the drama completely. The majority of the supporting cast were fairly inexperienced, but I liked how The Best Hit acted like a platform where actors like Kim Min-jae and Lee Se-young (who has acted since she was a child, but has only been gaining recognition recently) can show their potential.

  Moreover, I loved the diversity of the massive cast. Watching The Best Hit felt like a watching a weekend drama or a sitcom, because everyone got their turn in the spotlight - a particular highlight for me was Lee Deok-hwa's tear-jerking story, even though it was played for laughs in the beginning.
  I was initially very happy with how the balance between all these stories was maintained, but towards the end the drama took on a more melodramatic and romantic bent, meaning the lesser stories were pushed aside. I feel bad for Yoon Son-ha particularly, since she had faded into the backdrop by the final episode, although at the very least she and all the other characters got a satisfying conclusion to their individual arcs. 

My review is a little all over the place, but so is the drama, so I guess it's fitting. In conclusion, no - The Best Hit wasn't actually perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but few shows with pacing and logic flaws leave me so thoroughly satisfied and thus I'm left wishing I had more. You should watch even if it's just to see Yoon Shi-yoon play his most outlandish character yet, or to listen to the great OSTs. Here's to the future, because if I've learned anything, the biggest hits are left to come!