The Guilty Secret (2019)

Short, sweet, and to the point web series I found very enjoyable

The Guilty Secret aka I Have a Secret aka I Met You Again is a 12-episode slice of life web series from the company Playlist Global who are best known for A-Teen (my favorite of theirs) and Love Playlist though Just One Bite, Seventeen, and The Best Ending are also pretty popular. All their dramas center around high school, usually the last couple of years of it, at least what I've seen (there may be some 20-something characters in there, too). This one, as with many, is set in school where most teen-geared dramas do. It's clearly meant to cater TO teens and preteens, but I still like their stuff to varying extents despite being an elder to the ones in it! The episodes go from 8-15 minutes in length and are all available now on v live as I Have a Secret; they'll all be on YT as Guilty Secret pretty soon (9 are there as of this review), but they do delay the release there for whatever reason.

The basic setup (spoilers would be pretty tough given the length of episodes and slice of life feel but I'll refrain from any) is that a trio of girls and pair of guys make up a pretty tight, loyal friend group in a high school. The main character is a somewhat bookish girl who has the typical teen reservations/nervousness but is still eager to be around her friends, loyal, honest, careful not to hurt her friends, and so on. She's in the reading club along with the more quiet of the guys who we're never told but get a clear idea has a crush on her and is very protective of her and loyal. Her closest friend is a bubbly, somewhat loud but harmless, hypersensitive girly girl in the "Animal Club" which I am not sure exists in real schools but whatever floats their fictional boats! She's dating what seems to be the most popular guy in school. That said, we don't see an awful lot of guys at all in the story-they're definitely plot devices though the quiet one gets a bit more screen time and isn't always doing one of 3 things like the popular one who is either seeking food, wanting to play soccer, or with his girlfriend flirting or arguing. The last of the females is an idol trainee, quiet, shy, and apparently at least half Japanese. The characters are a bit cliche, sure, but how much can you create complexity with about 150 minutes total and a school setting/peer relationships to portray

Enter the sixth character (an easy favorite acting-wise) who becomes the game changer. She went to the female lead's academy, became friends with her quickly, and became the confidante to the lead. Secrets that could only be told to her were told as she went to a different school entirely and would not know who was being talked about. One day, she disappears from the academy mysteriously, and with it the female lead's secrets disappeared... until she transferred to the lead's school and quickly knew in a matter of hours who was who. Oops. What once gave her strength has now become a weakness, someone who could easily tell everything to everyone. Will she, though, and how will she use the information? I'll leave the rest for you to find out in quick cute snippets.

The acting is very believable throughout. The characters aren't anything special, but that's kind of what MAKES Playlist Global's web series special-they are completely ordinary stories about ordinary lives. Being a teen is enough to create drama without being an abnormal teen, at least when the total time is under 3 hours! It was a pleasant 2.5ish hours of time and one of the better recent web series I've seen (A-Teen is still their best and possibly -the- best of this genre to me). Music? Eh, not a lot of it to speak of-again, we're talking about episodes that are only a few songs long total. Rewatch value? Hmm, better than most web series and short enough to certainly casually have on again, but nothing new will be discovered, I don't think, if you watch it without distraction the first time, so I'll personally be moving on to another series or few!

All said, I'd be quite happy to see a second season of it (and I came with low anticipations). It's got good cinematography for what it is, the limited sets are all well-lit and make for a nice looking set of videos, and the chemistry is pretty natural-teens being teens. It's not soapy or sappy (overly dramatic or cringeworthy sticky as honey romantic), and it has very clear messages each time and a really nice ending I won't say a thing about here! :)

Enjoy!

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