Happy Friday! This week’s “global TV to watch” is about two Asian fantasy comedy series that you can stream for free in the US (and perhaps in other territories, too).
Today’s fantasy comedy theme came about from my having recently watched the 1942 film I Married a Witch, starring Veronica Lake and Frederic March. I haven’t watched many Asian shows in this sub-genre, so I went looking for some, and these are two that I found and recently started watching. So far, I enjoy both of them a lot.
Bring It On, Ghost (South Korea)
This fantasy comedy series follows college student Park Bong-pal (Ok Taec-yeon, Vincenzo, Save Me), who can see dead people. Ghosts can show up anywhere and at any time, even in his apartment while he’s brushing his teeth in the morning. Because he has this unique ability, he turns it into a money-making scheme by working as an exorcist for hire — only with weak ghosts that he can deal with easily, though. But when he works out how long it will take him to get to $1 million, he wonders if he should fight stronger ghosts, too, so he can make more money. Except he doesn’t have the skill.
Enter Kim Hyun-ji (Kim So-hyun, Love Alarm), a ghost who is a wandering spirit on earth, unable to go to the other side due to some sort of unfinished business. Bong-pal encounters Hyun-ji at the girl’s school she attended before she died… and is promptly beat up by her. Fast forward: Hyun-ji moves into Bong-pal’s apartment and helps him to fight and eliminate malevolent ghosts, while his spiritual protector, Monk Myung-chul (Kim Sang-ho, Undercover, While You Were Sleeping), takes on ghost-ridding assignments of his own. Others in their orbit include Chun-sang (Kang Ki-young, The Uncanny Counter) and In-rang (Lee Da-wit, Law School), aka GhostNet, students at Bong-pal’s college and self-professed ghost hunters, and Ju Hye-sung (Kwon Yul, Voice), a professor at the college… and a man possessed by an evil spirit.
Bring It On, Ghost is currently available for free streaming in the US on The Roku Channel and Tubi, with ad-free streaming currently available on Prime Video.
House of Spirits (Hong Kong)
This nominee for Best Comedy Programme at the 2017 Asian Television Awards stars Bobby Au-yeung (Shadow of Justice) as Po Foon, the eldest son of the family, who becomes the executor of his father’s estate after the patriarch dies sad and alone while waiting for his four adult children to come over for dinner. Their father owned the apartment he lived in, and his will stipulates that all four of his children must live in it together for nine months before they can sell it; if one of them doesn’t move in or moves out early, then Foon will be the only beneficiary. All of his siblings say no to this… until they learn that the value of the apartment is HK$12 million (roughly US$1.5 million).
Meanwhile, Foon finds an antique umbrella on the balcony, and gets covered with a kind of dust after opening it. When he goes back inside, he sees two “neighbors,” a man and a woman, in the apartment, sitting on the sofa, watching TV. Interestingly, after Foon’s niece opens the umbrella, she sees them, too. The thing is, folks say the next-door apartment has been vacant for years, and the two people were nowhere to be found inside or outside the building when it was evacuated due to a fire. Hmm… Then Foon witnesses something unearthly and he realizes these neighbors are actually ghosts.
House of Spirits is currently available for free streaming in the US on Tubi, as well as on the TVB Pearl channel on YouTube.
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