Color me absolutely ecstatic as, out of all the superb K-dramas airing at the moment, Heavenly Ever After starring 83-year-old Kim Hye Ja and brilliant actor half her age, Son Suk Ku, has just hit #1 on the Drama Brand Reputation Rankings for May.
The rankings are put out monthly by the Korean Business Research Institute from the usual data taken from what they call “consumer participation, media coverage, interaction, community awareness, and viewership indexes”, with 19 K-dramas being tracked this month.
For May then, Heavenly Ever After hit the top spot, followed by The Haunted Palace starring Yook Sung Jae and Bono. That’s a drama that has been seeing superb ratings since it premiered on April 18th, in the #2 position.
The Top 5 K-dramas on the chart are completed by weekend drama and biggest hit of the season For Eagle Brothers at #3, Resident Playbook (big Netflix hit too) at #4 and , surprisingly to me at least, Cinderella Game, which ended on April 25th, at #5.
The rest of the 19 Korean series on the Drama Brand Reputation Rankings for May look like this.
- Heavenly Ever After (JTBC)
- The Haunted Palace (SBS)
- For Eagle Brothers (KBS2)
- Resident Playbook (tvN)
- Cinderella Game (KBS2)
- The Art of Negotiation (JTBC)
- New Recruit 3 (ENA)
- Weak Hero (Wavve and Netflix)
- The Potato Lab (tvN)
- Desperate Mrs. Seon Ju (MBC)
- The Divorce Insurance (tvN)
- Karma (Netflix)
- Good Luck! (KBS1)
- Crushology 101 (MBC)
- Pump Up the Healthy Love (KBS2)
- Hyper Knife (Disney+)
- Villains Everywhere (KBS2)
- My Dearest Nemesis (tvN)
- Dear.M (KBS Joy in 2022)
Interesting too, dramas that really aren’t big hits (The Divorce Insurance with its massively collapsing ratings) or those that ended a while ago (My Dearest Nemesis, which ended its run on March 24th) still performed pretty well in the rankings.
As for the #1 K-drama on the list this month, Heavenly Ever After is streaming on Netflix, where it is still on their Top 10 Non-English TV Series chart for the 2nd week as well.
Update: Heavenly Ever After, Episode 8 also grabbed a personal record in the ratings on Sunday night