ABC Remake of My Love From Another Star |
Copyright ©2014-2021 - updated February 06, 2021
For the first time since I was twelve years old I recently wanted to watch television, the Korean series My Love From Another Star (aka My Love From the Star). I do not subscribe to cable nor to satellite television — my opting to instead purchase DVDs of the movies and series that I want to watch (the official DVD release of My Love From Another Star is one of the few that I prize in my collection) — but Korean dramas can also be streamed online.
My Love From Another Star is a twenty-one episode series about an alien man who travels to earth from another planet around the year 1609. The alien has unique talents, he saves the life of a young Korean girl shortly after his arrival, and 400 years later he saves another girl who looks very much like the first girl. The story plot itself is not overly remarkable, but the script, acting, and directing are. One of the beauties of the series is the Korean language itself; similar to French, some Asian languages — especially Korean — have a pleasing emotional rhythm when spoken softly and with feeling. The series has very little vulgarity — of which is relatively mild — and there is none of the endless hate, lewdness, disrespect, and violence that is shown on almost all American television programming.
The Korean culture is portrayed to give honor to the behavior of modesty, politeness, and respect, which to me is reason enough to watch a Korean drama. My Love From Another Star became hugely popular throughout Asia, and so perhaps there are many of us who prefer a story about friendship and love rather than a story about hate.
The pre-teen audience might enjoy My Love From Another Star for its special effects, while adults who have experienced similar events in life as portrayed in the series may enjoy how well the story brings to the surface one's own compassion, heartache, and happiness for another person. It would be a truly sad thing if an adult were to not yet have enough life-experience to cry while watching My Love From Another Star.
ABC has been reported to have purchased the rights to remake My Love From Another Star for American audiences. I myself cannot imagine it to be possible for an American television production to create a polite series of any topic — none known have been created yet — and so for me it is a depressing thought that an American company will take a thing of beauty and make it dirty. Surely the American version will mirror the hate, violence, and anti-family values that most all other American programs are known for, but no less displeasing is that there will be no beauty of the emotional toning of Korean words. ABC does not have to worry about losing me as a viewer, I do not watch any of their programming anyway — literally none — but now I will have a reason to hold a prejudice against ABC, and that is unfortunate.
Robin William's 1998 What Dreams May Come (written by Richard Matheson and Ronald Bass, and produced by Polygram) is the only known American film to have artistically touched on the beauty of relationships: might ABC hire qualified writers and directors to produce a new My Love From Another Star with a similar quality? I sincerely do wish ABC would, but we all know it will not happen.