The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio

K-drama's top superhero alien is the perfect boyfriend
Isaiah Washington returns to Grey's Anatomy
Hugh Dancy's role in 'Hannibal' is about to get more depressed

K-drama's top superhero alien is the perfect boyfriend

Posted: 12 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

My Love From The Star has swept most of East Asia off its feet with a romantic 17th-century superhuman hero.

Landing in South Korea after a trip to her native China, rapper Meng Jia of K-pop group Miss A shared an observation on Twitter: "Almost all Chinese women want an alien boyfriend."

To be more precise, the man they and others in East Asia want is from Planet K-drama: Do Min-joon, the ageless professor from outer space played by Kim Soo-hyun in the South Korean television phenomenon My Love From The Star.

He is a guy who has superhuman powers but is more perfect than Superman because he has his priorities right. He wants to protect only one person – the woman in his life, played by Gianna Jun.

My Love From The Star, a romantic fantasy created by writer Park Ji-eun (My Husband Got A Family, 2012), has been trending in East Asia after its debut in December last year.

In China, the show has more than one billion views on video websites such as iQiyi.com and PPS, and Kim Soo-hyun is one of the top searches on Baidu, the country's equivalent of Google, say reports on news website NetEase. Books read or referenced by Kim's character in the drama – including a 17th-century Korean fantasy novel, The Cloud Dream Of The Nine, and a 2006 American children's book, The Miraculous Journey Of Edward Tulane – are out of stock in China, add the reports.

The show is also said to have popularised fried chicken, the comfort food of Jun's character, and revitalised the country's H7N9-hit poultry trade.

In South Korea, the show took over from The Inheritors, the SBS teen romance featuring K-drama royalty Lee Min Ho and Park Shin Hye, and raced past it in the ratings. Whereas The Inheritors took 11 episodes to reach 20% of viewers nationwide, My Love From The Star took only four episodes.

A song Kim sang for the show, In Front Of Your House, flew to the top of the country's music charts two hours after it was released, says entertainment website allkpop. Which is all in a day's work for the hottest star from South Korea now. – The Straits Times, Singapore/Asia News Network

> My Love From The Star airs every Wednesday and Thursday at 8.55pm on ONE HD (Astro Ch 393).

Isaiah Washington returns to Grey's Anatomy

Posted: 12 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

The 'surgeon' on one of TV's most-loved dramas will be back this May for one episode.

ISAIAH Washington will return to the role of Preston Burke for an episode of Grey's Anatomy airing this May in the United States, marking the departure of Cristina Yang, the surgeon played by Sandra Oh, ABC has announced.

For Grey's Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes, it was unthinkable that Cristina would leave the series without having another run-in with Dr Preston Burke, the former Chief of Surgery in the cardiothoracic unit. Their love story was a major plot element during the show's first three seasons (between 2004 and 2007), leading up to the episode in which Preston left Cristina at the altar.

In reality, Washington was fired from the medical drama after being accused of making homophobic remarks to his former colleague T.R. Knight, who played George O'Malley, the character who died at the end of the fifth season in 2009.

Seven years after his precipitous departure, Washington will once again walk the halls of the Seattle hospital, although Rhimes is keeping the circumstances under wraps.

Slated to air in May, the episode in question is expected to coincide with the departure of Oh at the end of the show's 10th season, which is currently airing on ABC. – AFP Relaxnews

Hugh Dancy's role in 'Hannibal' is about to get more depressed

Posted: 11 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

Season Two of the crime thriller will see things becoming worse for almost everyone.

Hugh Dancy's the master of understatement when he says over a breakfast interview that Will Graham, his role on the NBC drama Hannibal, isn't "the happiest character I've ever played."

That's like saying serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) has a passing fancy for finger foods.

The first season took Dancy's character from the bowels of depression to the padded walls of a mental asylum after he was accused of committing the gruesome crimes perpetrated by Lecter. Things are just going to get worse in Season Two.

The character's depressed, down and unhappy – elements that made the role rich for Dancy to play.

"It was a slow, steady buildup just starting from a place of basic depression. I felt last year, last season, that progression over the course of the 13 episodes, was so well charted out," Dancy says.

The biggest clue to how far his character was going to fall came during his initial conversations with series creator Bryan Fuller. Dancy was told that at the end of the season his character was "going to vomit up into the air." That was all Dancy needed to know.

"In the relationship with Hannibal and working with Mads and kind of going further down that rabbit hole, it all, actually, fell into place in a very straightforward way. And dark as it may be, it was incredibly fun and rewarding. In fact, the worse it got for him, the more I enjoyed it, which may be to do with me. This season, it's even worse. So I've been very happy," Dancy says.

Season Two opens with Graham knowing exactly the kind of monster Lecter is. Before he can begin to stop Lecter, Graham must prove his own sanity and convince those closest to him he's innocent of murder.

Graham's and Lecter's worlds are so dark that some viewers have raised questions about the show's violence. Fuller says the show tries to stylise the violence so it's heightened and not real.

"What we do on the show is sort of purple and operatic because, if it were real, I couldn't watch it. I couldn't work on it. So we are borderline fantasy with what we do on the show." Fuller says.

"So I think it has to balance toward the psychology of what the characters need to go through and then we bend reality, but if we break it, believe me, we get reminded to sort of like step back. And we are a show in reality, but it's heightened." – The Fresno Bee/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

> Season Two of Hannibal premieres on April 1 at 10pm on AXN (Astro Ch 701)

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Rabu, 12 Mac 2014