Mandate (2025)

Impressive political drama with some romance

First of all this review is for the uncut version, where every episode has a runtime of about one hour. On youtube you see a very cut version which runs only about 45 minutes per episode. Also this series is not a BL. It's just a drama where the main protagonists happen to be gay, one open and the second one not so open. There is a romance part in it but not in the typical fluffy BL style. We see that Vee does admire Nong from the start and he warm ups to him very early. Nong is a grumpy type and very stubborn and it takes time to "warm up" to Vee.

The star of this show of course is the story and the superb acting. Every character has his flaws, some have more, some have less, but nobody is perfect. They depict the backstabbing and horse-trading in any politics, but they focused on actual events in Thailand which is a novum. While the series is more a slowburn, there are so many characters to keep track of that I'm happy we had the time to do so.

And the final episode was also atypical to any BL. This season ends on negative and positive notes but they clearly aimed to have a second season because the story is not finished with only eight episodes. So there is hope, we get another eight episodes to get a real happy end.

Because this is not GMMTV, we get a realistic story, with a great cast, good production design and overall an amazing series. If you are only in the fluffy stuff, this series is not for you. If you liked "Shine" you will like this series also.

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MANDATE - a groundbreaking political "BL" series from MONOMAX

Even though 2025 has blessed BL enjoyers with a number of diverse themed BL series, tackling a wide range of issues and social problems, Mandate has unexpectedly become my #1 favorite out of all the shows I watched, even when I had little to zero expectations for this.

Mandate managed to deliver exactly what it meant when it promised a POLITICAL series with a queer romance. It is so heavily political that audience are almost forced to stay on high alert at all time to keep up with all the events happening in the story.

I deeply appreciate how realistic Mandate dedicates itself to portraying the modern landscape of Thai politics through contemporary political issues such as vote buying culture, smear campaigns and party switching, political attacks, nepotism and family politics, politics mixed with media spectacle, real reforms often blocked by vested interests, ruthless power struggles, the law being used as a political weapon, scapegoats in political fights, rigging in government contracts.

The show is so damn realistic, prophetic even considering the time the script was developed and filmed, I even wrote a Reddit post about the similarities between Mandate and what's happening in Thai politics (https://www.reddit.com/r/boyslove/comments/1nz63gf/mandate_and_its_parallels_with_similarities_to/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)

The cast is full of veteran actors who are giving S+ tiered acting performances. Boy Pakorn is truly a star and he finally got a role that could fully showcase his full potential as an actor after years of being boxed as CH3 "action romcom male lead". Nong is such a wonderfully well written character and I particularly love how the screenwriters don't try to justify every bad/controversial decisions he makes. He's not the cookie cutter perfect male lead with perfect morale. He's just very human, very flawed, very vulnerable and I love everything about him.

I had my reservations about the chemistry because this was only Ben's second series ever but I think they really put a LOT into those workshops prior filming because even when the romantic scenes are limited in number, you can really feel how Vee and Nong gradually develop feelings for each other amidst the lack of mutual trust and reservation because of the precarious state that they're in.

Because there was only 8 EPs and the show had a LOT to tell, I felt like some plotlines move very fast, some are better paced. That being said, I enjoyed how they didn't spent a single second for filler scenes and the editing was done very well to gradually unpack the suspense and twists of the story. I usually spend a full hour going WTF?!!!!? (positive) at the end of every episode and then rewatching each ep 1-2 times and pondering on the ingenuity of the critiques of and jabs at Thai politics in Mandate.

Although this show probably wasn't as high budget as other MONOMAX's dramas (their action/thriller/horror stuff probably? usually? cost more), it was still very well made with care put into every aspect of production from wardrobe to props to script. So even if this wasn't a high value production, classy, cinematically color graded production, I appreciate the sincerity of P'Moo and ASA studio for taking so much risks and being bold with Mandate in their first ever production. They've truly written a groundbreaking and unique political series featuring a gay romance without even trying to market it like "it's not a BL series" or things like that, even when indeed many aspects of Mandate do not fall within the framework of a typical BL series.

OVERALL
I FUCKING LOVE MANDATE. PEAK TELEVISION. please give this a try if you are a politics enthusiast, likes slow burn, minimal gay romance in a plot heavy show or just likes shows that are a lot of people talking to each other, making political deals, playing tricks on each other, twists and turns 🤗

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