Romantic Doctor, Teacher Kim review

Romantic Doctor, Teacher Kim is a medical drama about what makes a good doctor, and it takes the question seriously. Han Seok Kyu plays a legendary surgeon who walked away from a big-city career to run the emergency room of a small rural hospital. Two young doctors land there against their will, an ambitious surgeon played by Yoo Yeon Seok and a gifted one played by Seo Hyun Jin, each carrying damage of their own. The show is built on cases, and the cases are the best thing in it: every emergency tests somebody's ethics as well as their hands, and the patients get real stories instead of serving as props. Han Seok Kyu is the anchor. His Teacher Kim is gruff, funny and hard on the people he trains, and that toughness is the point, even when it grates in the early episodes. The quality holds across all twenty episodes. The weak spots sit around the edges. The hospital board and the money men trying to close the place down are the broadest part of the show, and some of the younger doctors are written as immature for a long time before they grow. The romance is light and slow, a side dish rather than the meal, so anyone after a hospital love story should look elsewhere. Surgeons here handle everything from trauma to diagnosis, so do not expect realism. Two sequel seasons followed with Han Seok Kyu back at the centre, and this first one is still the place to start. Watch it for the lead performance, the cases and a show with a clear moral spine. Skip it if you want romance first or a cynical take on medicine.