I just finished with House of the Dark Shadows, a Thai series which is known only by its Thai name, Reuan Rom Ngiw, earlier this week which was very entertaining to watch. Now I’ve discovered another Thai series without an official English title. It is just known by its Thai name Siew Sum Noi, and obviously the title confuses everyone that it has no English translated title but it has 3 translated Chinese titles of either 青春摯友 (Intimate Friends of Youth), 苦甜之戀 (Bitter Sweet Love), or 好膽你就愛 (Be Brave to Love). I read somewhere that Siew Sum Noi is a phrase in Isan dialet meaning My Little Friend.
It is a 12-episode BL series that premiered on May 12, 2021 in Thailand and now near the end of its first run, with 2 more episodes to go I think. I binged 5 epsiodes the last couple of days and really enjoyed the series. I’ve dropped a lot of Thai or Korean BL series this year after just a couple of episodes, either due to slow-as-snail story-telling, wooden acting, or silly sugary sweet plots. However surprisingly most of the acting by the young actors in Siew Sum Noi are quite natural and the plots move along nicely without too much filler scenes. It is also another series set in the northeast of Thailand (same as Hometown’s Embrace), apart from the Bangkok campus setting in the early episodes. Nice to see that Thai BL dramas have started to move away from full campus stories and out of the Bangkok setting.
This series is a comedy drama, with musical thrown in for good measures. Therefore sometimes when they are in the middle of a dramatic moment, they would suddenly burst out into a song, and that would always bring a silly smile on my face, LOL… The only problem with this series is there is no ways of watching the official episodes outside Thailand for us international viewers, the only way is to find unofficial episodes with English or Chinese subtitles provided by fans which is a real shame as it is actually quite a good series. Anyway, here’s the official trailer and some OST from the series…
Update July 26, 2021: Caught up to episode 11, one more episode to go later this week. So far a fun series to watch. Poor IG, he’s just a big teddy bear, soft hearted and always at the raw end of the deal – slapped by his girlfriend, then slapped by his grandmother, got a cut on his face after a tussle with Ruk when he’s so much taller than Ruk, threatened by 3 love rivals. Little Ruk comes off as having a more aggressive personality than IG! The scene on the bus was so hilarious, IG singing over the phone to his grandma, my favourite scene of the series, LOL… Not what one expected usually of a big boy in BL plots!
Corner Café 
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