Ready, Set, Love

Ready, Set, Love - a colorful mini series for Valentine's Day

Netflix Thailand really opened their 2024 with a fantastic original work. Ready, Set, Love is a dystopian romcom miniseries (6 episodes) with a LOT of comedy, a hint of thriller, the cheesiest and corniest writing but also a lot of heart. The perfect Valentine's Day binge in my opinion.

STORY
Set in a dystopian world the female population outnumbers the male, our protagonist Day (Belle Kemisara) got selected into a government-sponsored reality competition called "Ready, Set, Love" where women compete to win the affection of five "Gentlemen". While the premise is original, I thought the execution of the story was a little bit of cliche and predictable at times. I definitely feel like I caught many references to The Hunger Games and Divergent and other popular dystopian genre works (Eve Capital????). But besides the cliche writing, there were a LOT of LGBTQIA+ positive messages sprinkled throughtout the dialogues and LGBTQ+ representation. I was so happy to get a scene where our supporting lesbian couple having an ultrasound of their baby. Althought the series promoted itself as a romantic comedy series, I think Ready Set Love is was much darker than I had expected for a Valentine's Day release. But with a tight-pacing, the series did well to tell everything in the span of 6 episodes while covering all the characters' subplots as well as not leaving any loose threads (BUT THAT CLIFFHANGER POST-CREDIT SCENE? @NETFLIX BE SERIOUS). The series got very dark all of a sudden in the last episode but I thought it was a reasonable writing choice.

ACTING/CAST
Our ML is Son, the most popular and handsome Gentleman, played by Blue Pongtiwat. I think the romantic scenes between Belle Kemisara and Blue Pongtiwat were believable but not crazy insane, just decent enough because they're two incredible actors. I think the supporting characters definitely stole the series a little bit more for me. I particularly love Paper (the youngest Gentleman), May (Day's younger sister) and Valentine (Day's bestfriend) and Chun. The actors for these supporting characters were delivering top-notched performances even with the little scenes they had. The miniseries did very well in giving all the supporting characters of the series a lot of room to fully portray and tell their stories.

MUSIC
The score is bubbly and fun. I love the jazzy opening intro and the graphics fit it perfectly. There's this song that the character Chun (played by Kunchanuj) sings and I absolutely adore it. Music is a huge part of Paper's storyline and I love the songs seletion for this series.

REWATCH VALUE
This is one of those series where I don't think I'll rewatch because the mystery plot only really works the first time that you watch. But I do think I'll rewatch certain episodes for the cinematography because the color palette of this series is so vivid and vibrant, I was in awe the wholetime. It reminds me of the color palette of Pushing Daisies, which is a favorite series of mine.

PRODUCTION
This was such a high value production from Netflix Thailand, I'm surprised by how bad they're marketing this. I keep mentioning the colors of the series but I'm not kidding at all, it is truly beautiful and so gorgeous. The set, the costume, the visual effects. You can FEEL the high budget for this series from just the first episode because the fictional world they've created is honestly very realistic.

OVERALL
If you're looking for a high-value, fast-paced, quirky campy romcom Thai miniseries (6 episodes) with a dash of dystopian and thriller element, Ready, Set, Love is definitely a must-watch Netflix Original.

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Thailand is now bringing us into dystopian

Clever, imaginative, well-written, and well-executed. Don’t get swayed by its cheesy title since the show has a deeper story to tackle about. I am a big fan of the concept of dystopia; showcasing injustice in a society and bringing a creative set-up on the way people live, was truly a chef’s kiss. Thankfully, the show succeeded in offering this to us. The story's foundation of having an uneven ratio of two genders where the chance of giving birth to a male child is too low was phenomenal.

They also managed to give depth behind the characteristics of everyone from the show with reasonable development throughout the end. The majority of the cast is likable, the same with their cute and fun little games with budgeted props that make it more lively.

When I finished its pilot episode, a question came to my mind, “If all existing gentlemen are living in a small luxury city, what would happen if one or two of them fell in love? Not to a woman but to a man since they aren’t that pretty exposed to the women outside their living environment.” Fortunately, my BL heart was satisfied enough with Pepper’s story. A man from The Farm fell in love with another man who is living in a hidden place called City Ground.

This is certainly a mini-dystopian series that is rarely produced by the entertainment industry in Thailand. Although I felt that the progression of the story lacks in terms of expansion and solving cases, it is still understandable since they only have eight total episodes to fit everything. The open-ended conclusion was great since it allowed people to be hyped for a possible sequel. Yet, I honestly think that the four-year time skipped before the ending credit was unnecessary and they should just stick with the cliff-hanging part of what will happen to them after freeing from the government. I want to see more scenes of how they will fight back the injustice and bring peace and prosperity to the people.

There is only one time from the show that I feel extremely frustrated. It is when on EP02, they labeled Almond as the best cooker among the gentlemen. Yet, he happened to be the clueless one when it came to finding the right ingredients for Thai dishes and desserts. That was just naive of the production that they let this idea end up being aired for the sake of romance between the second lead. Despite some of its flaws, the overall impact of the show was cool and entertaining. Blue Pongtiwat introduced me to this series and I am grateful for that. I’ve been following him on his Instagram for a long time but this is the first time watching him in a drama. He does prove to me that his undying charm is there for a reason. He is indeed a good actor, the combination of his appeal and acting was well-balanced.

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