‘All That We Loved’ review: a shaky callback to a bygone era of K-dramas

“We were fearless and had no worries. We giggled at things that were meaningless. Back then, what we could do best was to love.” This affecting quote, muttered by one of All That We Loved’s protagonists, poignantly encapsulates the nostalgic core that runs through TVING’s recently concluded K-drama. That’s what youth really is – living like the world is your oyster and finding specks of beauty in everything, even the mundane. But the thing about youth is that it quietly slips through your fingers before you even realise it, and all you’re left with are memories of people you can no longer speak to the same way.

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Dr. Go (played by Song Jae-rim) knows this feeling all too well as the series’ narrator. In spite of his material success in the present day as an award-winning psychiatrist living in a luxurious high-rise apartment, he looks back on his high school days with a crestfallen look of longing in his eyes. As we accompany Dr. Go on his trip down memory lane, All That We Loved jumps back over thirty years to the ’90s with two best friends, Go Yoo (played by EXO’s Sehun) and Go Joon-hee (Jo Joon-young), keeping Dr. Go’s true identity under wraps.

Despite their unmistakable bond, both boys are near polar opposites of each other. Yoo is a basketball prodigy who is archetypically talented at sports but hopeless when it comes to his studies. Joon-hee, on the other hand, excels in his academics, dedicating his days and nights to penning notes and doing practice exams. Because of his nerdy persona and feeble physique, he is also subject to unrelenting bullying from some of the older boys at school. Yoo almost always comes to Joon-hee’s aid – that doesn’t mean he always wins his fights, but Yoo is happy to take some punches on his best friend’s behalf if it means that keeps him safe.

The story starts when Han So-yeon (Jang Yeo-bin) – Hara High School’s newest transfer student – crosses paths with Yoo and Joon-hee. In typical K-drama fashion, it’s love at first sight for both boys. In fact, nearly the entire school’s male population is infatuated with her, like a shiny new toy on Christmas Day. So-yeon chooses to remain an enigma to the student body upon her transfer, roaming around the school grounds by herself and seemingly in a never-ending foul mood whenever someone tries to approach her. Of course, this ends when she befriends Yoo and Joon-hee.

Unsurprisingly, Yoo and Joon-hee’s infatuations rapidly develop into something deeper as their friendship with So-yeon grows. Things get even more complicated when Joon-hee, who is later revealed to have had a kidney transplant from Yoo, begins experiencing a fictional ailment called cellular memory syndrome, causing Yoo’s memories to be transferred and muddled with his own. As the series progresses, the boys find themselves at odds with each other because of it, each facing intense inner turmoil about what is more important to them – friendship or love.

Right from the outset, the series is very clearly a pastiche of numerous, admittedly well-loved tropes and themes employed by a host of cult classic K-dramas over the decades. It’s a double-edged sword – it is so reminiscent of romance dramas in the 2010s (think The Heirs, Boys Over Flowers, Reply 1988, the School series) that it successfully pulls the audience in by offering morsels of nostalgia from that bygone era of productions. Everything from colour-grading, cinematography and lighting is carefully framed and angled to evoke the wistfulness of the decade.

The other edge of that sword? We have already seen it all before – and better. There’s little stopping viewers from just revisiting much-beloved classics. All That We Loved doesn’t challenge these motifs by bringing something mind-blowingly innovative or new. The series also rushes the story, with three timelines and at least four backstories to unpack and resolve in only eight episodes. The Heirs had a whole 20 episodes to fully wrap up a similarly weighty story.

The performances of our main trio of protagonists are also adequate at best, with Sehun being the best performer out of the three, seamlessly slipping into his role and the nuances that come with it (although there is something to be said about him passing as a teenager). However, newcomers Jang Yeo-bin and Jo Joon-young are regrettably stiff and unconvincing in their roles.

All That We Loved may be a soothing, familiar watch if you’re a nostalgia junkie, but if you’re on the hunt for a fresh rom-com, you might be better off looking elsewhere. The K-drama tries to be a fun callback to a bygone era, but has little substance to hold its own against the fresher, creative stories we are able to access today.

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