‘Sound of Your Heart’ signals welcome comeback of sitcom
SEOUL: KBS’s new sitcom ‘ The Sound of Your Heart’ signifies a successful comeback.
Cho Seok’s now 10-year- old slapstick webcomic has been adapted for animated films and web dramas, but now it has finally been made into a sitcom.
‘ The Sound of Your Heart’, features Lee Kwang- soo, who has a large fan base in Asia as a cast member of popular TV show “Running Man”, as aspiring cartoonist Cho Seok. Many other veteran actors and actresses, who look as if they’ve walked out of the cartoon, appear in the show as Cho’s eccentric family and friends.
The web drama, which previously premiered simultaneously in Korea and China on Nov. 7, passed the 100 million mark on the Chinese online portal Sohu, becoming No. 1 among Korean dramas on the site. On the Korean online portal Naver, the show has collected more than 30 million views to become Korea’s most watched web series of all time.
Its television version as well, aired from Dec. 9, has garnered positive responses from viewers as well, posting a 5.7 per cent viewership rating, according to Nielsen Korea.
“The show is freshness itself. It’s been a long while, I’ve burst into laughter watching a show,” said Hang Hyun, a netizen on the programme’s online bulletin board. Another netizen Lee Sang- bae left a comment that the show made him log in and cheer up for the show, asking the broadcaster not to dilute the political connotations the original webtoon has.
“From the writing stage, we had the TV version in mind, so the episodes that were unveiled online were more sensational, whereas for TV, we aimed to make it comfortable for families to watch and for all age groups,” said Ha Byoung-hun, the director. “My mother was the yardstick. I wanted to make it so that even my mother could understand it and laugh with it.”
The 20- episode TV version, including the ten already released online and the other ten original episodes were produced exclusively for TV.
Experts say that the ‘ The Sound of Your Heart’ is leading the trans- media content trend in the country, where single content is used across multiple media sources.
Jung Duk- hyun, a culture critic, said, “We have seen many webtoon- based television dramas here. But, ‘ The Sound of Your Heart’ is the first to take another step and make a web- drama before making into a television show.”
“In the era of multi- platform broadcasting, the sitcom is meaningful in the sense that it expanded the use of a single content,” he added.
Some others say that success of the sitcom may revive the heyday of sitcom genre, that once prospered and churned out many celebrity stars but has disappeared from the small screen for years. KBS, too, has not aired any sitcom since ‘ Pure Love’ in 2013.
KBS is preparing to air its second sitcom ‘ Jung- nam Hyung’, an educational Korean language- learning comedy created for hallyu fans all over the world, while SBS has recently announced its comeback to the genre in five years with the sitcom ‘Strong Family’ scheduled to premiere next year.