Secret Garden (2019)

Often when a remake of a drama is produced by another country many of the script changes are adaptations for the purpose of cultural and societal relevance to their country. However, this was not the case with the Thai version of Secret Garden, which I can best describe as misinterpretation that leads to a multitude of misunderstandings. Early on it was evident with their questionable casting choices for the lead roles and from there the drama continued to spiral downhill with a lack of attention to details; the omission of so many relevant scenes and shrinkage of the plot and subplots. Major plot points of the story became anti-climatic or glazed over and the humor is almost non-existent as a result of these omissions. Many of the important nonverbal and subtle nuance scene moments were removed from this version as well, which means they really did not understand their relevance or they just deemed them irrelevant. Character development for the leads never really happens because Ananda Everingham was miscast as the male lead and the lack of attention paid to the details of his character's anal arrogant OCD tendencies and nature; home and wardrobe made the situation even worse. Baifern Pimchanok was not properly trained and conditioned to play a convincing stunt woman, which was very evident and noticeable immediately. Otherwise, she and the remaining cast do manage to pull off acceptable performances with Chin Chinawut Indracusin as Ray (Thanat's cousin and Pop Star) and Chaoey Suthada Jungjaiphar as Mook (Veena's best friend and roommate) giving solid standout performances in their roles. The other real miscast was Vajrasevee Pimpatchara as Adia (Ray's Ex-girlfriend), she lacked the sage and sophistication to pull off the role. The original Secret Garden's OST is meticulous as part of a near-perfect drama and a tough act to follow; they could not possibly put together a decent OST because they clearly did not understand the symbiotic relationship between the music, the scenes, and characters, which is due in part to their disastrous misunderstandings of the original drama. When a great drama series is remade and misinterpreted to the point where its very essence is written out of the script and lost, it becomes painful to watch.

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