Binge watch away your COVID blues

Contrary to the gleeful nastiness of Run, New Year Blues is the kind of meandering rom-com nonsense that fans will unabashedly adore, and naysayers will use as Exhibit A, proving their insipidness. Unfolding a week before New Year, four ridiculously attractive South Korean couples navigate different stages of romance. Divorced cop Ji-ho and divorcing trainer Hyo-young connect over a restraining order; corporate burn-out Jae-hun and freshly dumped ski resort worker Jin-A meet while both seek emotional salve in Buenos Aires; travel agent Yong-chan hopes to bridge the gap between his Chinese fiancee Yaolin and sister Yong-mi; and Paralympic snowboarder Rae-hwan and his horticulturalist fiancee O-wol's relationship is stressed by tabloids and agents.

If you wonder whether all this is going to end on a high note, with much head-shaking and rueful grinning, then you've never seen a rom-com. But there's no denying the inherent pleasure of watching the all-star cast banter and bicker, and the Argentinian (and Seoul) locations for the travel-starved. For every viewer that finds the idea of stalker as plot device distasteful and wonders why director Hong Ji-young (whose 2013 Marriage Blue followed a similar format) never brings the disparate characters together, as is hinted, plenty of others will brush those foibles aside and revel in Blues' fantastical sentimentality and sunny disposition, and be done with it.