With the demise of Xman, Love Letter, Heroine 6, Jiwhaza, there’s practically zlich korean variety shows that used to be watchable every weekend. The days where I used to anticipate watching those chinese subber groups compete to release each episode as fast as they could is long gone.
It’s not to say that there aren’t good variety shows in Korea. It’s just that they are more geared to the Korean population and not for the overseas viewers like me. Actually the reason for such shows like Xman being popular overseas is because of the stars, fun and romance factor. Still, occasionally you can get subbed episodes of Ya Shim Man Man, Manwon Happiness but only if the guests have a large fanbase in China like DBSK, Shinhwa, Big Bang, etc.
Now recently I have gotten to watching this SBS variety show called Star King hosted by Kang Ho Dong, our favourite wrestler turned host. Frankly, I wasn’t really sold on the idea when it first aired as a replacement for Love Choice on Saturday afternoon. The idea of having regular challengers coming onto the show and perform their talents and then getting judged at the end by judges reeked of familiarity. This had been done to death in Taiwan and I am bored stiff watching them. Every once in a blue moon, you get someone who is real talented but that’s very rare.
But apparently it is quite popular in Korea since you get to see normal people and not celebrities showing their stuff while there are always celebrity judges on the panel as well for those who needs their star fix.
I have never watched a single episode of Star King. Not even after the demise of Xman and people were telling me to give it a try. I always resisted because I never have patience to watch common folk performing their talent, I just think it would be boring.
For now, watching Star King would be just subjected to whether the chinese subber group releases this according to what stars would be on it.
