A Virtuous Business
Uncle Samsik
The Whirlwind
Good Partner
The Tale of Lady Ok
Knight Flower
Doubt
Blackout
Wonderful World
Chief Detective 1958

Like Flowers In Sand
The Atypical Family
Connection
Mr. Plankton

My favorite genres are sageuk and mystery/ thriller. None of my 2024 favorites (except Connection) matched my preferred drama type, but I enjoyed them nevertheless. Lesson learned: try dramas outside your comfort zone.

Tell Me That You Love Me.
Sejak Jo Jung-seok.
Doubt.
Maestra: Strings of Truth.
Uncle Samsik.
Connection.

Tell Me That You Love Me takes the Daesang prize.

I actually think this might get a little easier as we get a couple of years back. When we’re only a few months into 2025, looking back at 2024 with an historical lens is tricky! That said, Beanies are not ones to let something as silly as recency stop us from claiming that a drama was the best one ever so I’m looking forward to peoples’ takes! Ok, I looked back at my dramas for last year, and right away I felt pretty good about narrowing it down to just a handful: Like Flowers in Sand, Queen of Tears, Marry My Husband, Lovely Runner, Jeongnyeon. This is not a list of my favorite dramas of the year, but they are the ones that I watched that felt the most significant, even as they were airing.

But I think the crown should go to Lovely Runner for this round. It was reasonably successful in Korea but it was an absolute smash hit internationally. Despite only being on Viki, tons of people watched it and it topped Viki’s charts for weeks and weeks. Later it felt like Netflix was scrambling to get it because the response had been so strong. I wasn’t around for the Boys Over Flowers era that saw so many new people introduced to Kdramas, but this is what I imagine it felt like. And even with only modest domestic success, it propelled the two leads further into the spotlight and they’ve both landed high-profile projects as their next steps, which goes to show that international success of a drama can have powerful ripples across the industry. It also just has that addictive quality that I associate with a lot of older kdramas that makes it hard to stop watching, but unlike those, I still love it months later. Sun-jae I think will also go down in history as the platonic ideal of the loser-in-love archetype, which has been popular lately and I think will stick around for a while. I’m hoping in a few decades, we will point to this drama as part of the movement that initially popularized that set of traits.

In retrospect, 2024 had a lot of very good dramas. On my A list of dramas for that year were:
TELL ME THAT YOU LOVE ME (A+)
DOG KNOWS EVERYTHING (A)
CONNECTION (A-)
BITTERSWEET HELL (A-)
HIDE (A-)
THE FROG (A-)
DEATH’S GAME (A -)
Short Dramas:
ShortsL
TAROT (Santa’s Visit) (A-)
TO MY LONELY SISTER (2024) (A-)

TELL ME THAT YOU LOVE ME was the top stand-out because it was unique in its storytelling (sign language), how people can be drawn together even if communication is lacking then overcoming those language barriers to have real, deep and serious conversations. It was an antithesis of a normal k-drama love story.

My favorites ones were :

- Flex x Cop : It was fun till the end.

- Like Flower in the Sand : I wished they reunited the childhood group before but it was really a great drama.

- Wedding Impossible and Lovely Runner : They had really great first part and they kinda lost me in the second part.

But the price goes to Will Love in Sprin, sadly not a KDrama, but a great story!

2024 wasn't an amazing year for dramas; I remember starting and shutting off a LOT of mediocre to bad dramas. However, the ones I loved I really, really loved and still think about.
For the top prize, it's still "Mr. Plankton" for me. I've seen so many romantic kdramas now that it takes a lot to move me (or just give me butterflies) but this one gave me all the feels from the very beginning. WDH is magnetic and although there is not a conventional happy ending, I still felt content by the ending.

Runners-up:

Flowers in Sand: Hands down the best ML of the year.
Atypical Family: Seemed gimmicky at first but proved me wrong--original, suspenseful, and heartfelt. I loved the ending, too.
Lovely Runner: Still a bit salty that it swept the DB Editor Awards, but will not deny that the main couple had great chemistry and it was extremely well directed and edited.
Queen of Tears: I do believe KSH is lying about his relationship with KSR but I am choosing to separate from his role in this drama, which I found entertaining all the way through.

If I understand it correctly, we can only say one drama 🤔

_ My winner is Atypical Family.

Runners-up: Queen of Tears and Drama Special The Two Women.

And from China my winner is Are you the one?

Runners-up: Joy of Life 2 and The Legend of Shen Li.

I have only two outstanding dramas of 2024 - one is "Wonderful World", and the other is "Uncle Samshik". The latter stands out for me because it is so well made in every aspect: great writing, great acting, great filming, and a lot of heart in it. It is a lot about politics, and a lot about history, and a lot about how the two things might interfere with one's own little life, and how hard it is to live a decent one. It is nuanced from beginning to end, and very, very impactful. And then you see a bit about a period in Korean history that is rarely shown in dramas. I'd love to read the book, but I don't think there is one.
"Wonderful World" is, for me, not so much about the plot - who did what when or so. I saw people complaining during its running that the revelations weren't really surprising and things like that; I think that's not the point of this drama. For me it's about what happens when you grieve. What grief can make you do, or feel, or not. How it can drive you to act against your own convictions and personality, and how lies and misconceptions can feed into that, and how you can eventually get out of it. Not nearly as nuanced as my other choice, sadly, especially when it comes to the villain, but all in all very good. I love how the set designs mirror the personalities of the characters, among other things.

For me, the best drama of 2024 was Like Flowers in Sand. It was a beautiful masterpiece in my opinion. Everyone so completely disappeared into their roles, including the supporting roles of residents, that it felt like watching life unfold as real people went about their lives in a real town where ssireum is the lifeblood. The cast is fantastic, as is the group of friends who connect (and reconnect) as adults. The sea itself is also an ever-present character, with waves creating a wash of background sound in many scenes, echoed by the rustling of leaves further inland. The cinematography is gorgeous, creating a sense of expansiveness and space - you can sense how the coastline, scenery, and town stretches out past the frame, and that life is happening even where the camera doesn't have time to show us. The child actors were so good, and so in sync with their adult counterparts, that they look and FEEL like the younger versions of our grownup leads, giving us insight into their adult choices through their young eyes. Jang Dong-yeon's performance was magnificent. He became his character, right down to his walk, mannerisms, and gaze. Baek-du is not completely naive, but his complete sincerity and genuineness made him seem that way to others. His lack of guile sometimes gives him clear insight to see through people, but can also keep him from recognizing guile in others. Watching his character, sportsmanship, and skill shine through his ssireum matches was a joy, as was seeing him realize that it is not selfish for him to use his skill to seize wins from his opponents. In a drama full of moments I loved, one of my favorite things was that from the very moment Baek-du saw and recognized Du-sik, even as she protested her identity, she unconsciously dropped her Seoul accent and slipped back into satoori to argue with Baek-du. His ability to see through her facade brought back the Du-sik he had known. In many ways, this was a drama about (late) blooming and renewal: renewing your strength to follow your dreams, renewing the bonds of friendship (and tentatively beginning a new romance), and renewing trust by getting to the root of an old tragedy. And what a lovely, lovely ending - one of the most triumphantly perfect final episodes I've seen.

This might not fit exactly as "best dramas of 2024" but theoutsidejoke@kmromrell put together a whole spreadsheet with beanie's favorite picks. Comment 3 under https://dramabeans.com/2024/12/2024-year-in-review-the-bean-count/ It was a fantastic job. The dramas that had the highest bean count were: Lovely Runner, Like Flowers, Atypical, No Gain and Flex.

Top three
Uncle Samsik and Mr Plankton for story and acting. Mr Plankton had great cinematography and Uncle Samsik great period sets.
No gain, no love for laugh out loud moments, found family and a strong female lead.

Strong contenders
Tell me that you love me, Pachinko, What comes after love, Jeongnyeon - The star is born, Love next door, Lovely runner, My sweet mobster.

2024 had some great shows (and some shows that I dropped too)

Top of my list was QUEEN OF TEARS which was Makjang done right- with a poignant love story included.

GORYEO-KHITAN WAR was Sageuk done right and proof that Pre-Joseon Sageuks are usually far superior to the Joseon Era ones.

Two crime investigation comedies: FLEX X COP and DOG KNOWS EVERYTHING

FLEX X COP was maybe the funniest show of the year.

DOG KNOWS EVERYTHING was a great ensemble show with a raft of mature actors and at the same time it was so well done that EVEN THE DOG WON A DRAMA AWARD.

GOOD PARTNER was a legal show that featured great performances but even more amazing it generally got the law right- and even got the spirit of the laws right.

MARRY MY HUSBAND was simply a remarkably well put together show.

Jeongnyeon, despite an occasionally wobbly screenplay, was the best overall k-drama I watched in 2024. The acting and directing were extraordinary across the board, and each performer not only made their "real life" characters believable but they were convincing as yeoseong geukguk stars, not just for brief performance "clips" but for extended sequences featuring intense singing, dance and highly stylized acting and staging. I have never seen a show bring stage performances to life so vividly on screen, and the fact that it celebrates a groundbreaking all-female art form that was disappearing from historical memory makes it even more significant. It's a powerful show that genuinely breaks new ground, rather than just recycling the same plots and tropes over and over again, and the fact that it was a major hit despite its lack of a male lead, its queer themes, and its unique story are all testaments to the craft and care with which it was made.

Atypical Family takes the top spot: mind-blowing OST, great cinematography, unusual story and characters; the child actors were absolutely the best part.
- Flex X Cop: my fave genre, a cop show with heart and humour; reintroduced me to Ahn Bo Hyun.
- No Gain No Love: A romance, which didn't shy away from adult humour; my favourite leads, including gorgeous Kim Young Dae; horrible ending though.
- Tell Me That You Love Me: Just beautiful all around, enough said.
- Chief Inspector 1958: Same genre as Flex, with great art direction, and new favourite Lee Je Hoon.
And of course, Will Love in Spring: not a Kdrama, but among my favourite shows across time and language; Romantic, deep, real, thought-provoking.

As it has been already mentioned the Bean of Greatness thread covers this prompt to a T. In case anyone chooses to revisit the thread - I still stand by my choices. 😂🙃🤣

For me personally Welcome To Samdal-ri was a particularly memorable drama. The cast was phenomenal. Seeing uri Hacker Ajhumma and uri OG Healer together was an unexpected treat and Ko Mi-ja did love Yong-pil sshi as her own son even if she beat up her grown-up daughters 🙈. I owed my bean to Ji Chang-wook.

Of course whatever one felt about the dramas no mention of the year 2024 can be complete without the Lovely Runner (Carry Sun-Jae And Run) and the Queen of Tears which got phenomenal recognition all over the world. Both were amazing live watches.

I always find it sooo difficult to accord Best of Anything, but ok, if i must choose:

Based on squee factor, feelings, rewatch - Queen of Tears.

Based on impeccable storytelling and riveting characters - Like Flowers in Sand / Watch Baek Du Run.

If you find me commenting otherwise elsewhere on DB, forgive my memory and fickle heart.

I didn't watch a lot of the shows people are talking about. I'll have to catch up! I have an idea about my favorite (Mr. Plankton). I'll think about why and come back to it if I have time.

I don't really like to criticize anything that brings pleasure to a lot of other people, but here's something I've been thinking about. I enjoyed Lovely Runner, but I didn't love it as much as others did (I think I liked the recaps on DB best!). At the risk of sounding shallow, I found the FL's voice annoying. That, together with her chirpy manner and the school setting, made it hard for me to take the leap necessary to accept some of the dodgy time-skip logic or feel invested in the characters. HOWEVER, I'm currently about halfway through Extra-ordinary you, which features the same actress, same school setting, same basic plot (she keeps trying to change fate so that the tall pretty boy doesn't disappear), and I'm okay with all of it here. Maybe because it's so overtly cartoonish? I don't know!

FAVOURITES - LOVED THEM!
A Shop for Killers (best!)
Death Game (close 2nd)
Lovely Runner
Like Flowers In Sand
A Killer Paradox
Family Matters
Love Next Door (I don't care what you think!)
LTNS
Marry My Husband
Spice Up Our Love
Welcome to Samdalri

ENJOYED - GLAD I WATCHED THEM
The Atypical Family
Mr. Plankton
Lovely Runner
The Midnight Romance in Hagwon
Queen of Tears (liked it then, but a bad taste now)
A Killer Paradox
Flex x Cop
Doctor Slump  
A Good Day to be a Dog 
Chicken Nugget (yes!)
Cinderella at 2am (fun, don't come at me)
Dreaming of a Freaking Fairy Tale (same)
Dear Hyeri
Family By Choice
Gangnam B-Side
Knight Flower
No Gain No Love
Parasyte: The Grey
Pyramid Game
Red Swan
Romance in the House
Squid Game2
The 8 Show
The Trunk
The Tyrant
When the Phone Rings
Wonderful World
My Sweet Mobster
DNA Lover

ACTIVELY HATED!
My Demon
The Judge From Hell
Gyeongseong Creature & 2
Miss Night and Day (disappointing)
Sweet Home 3
High School Return of a Gangster
The Impossible Heir
The Fiery Priest 2 (what a let down...)
Frankly Speaking
Hellbound 2
The Player 2: Master of Swindlers

Thinking back what stuck with me the most of the dramas I watched in 2024, the result is a bit surprising (well, at least for me): two dramas popped to my mind, and not my „comfort watches“. (So I must second @snowflower - do try to watch dramas once in while that are outside your comfort zone! They might just be worth it. 😉)

The first is PACHINKO (to be fair, this was only the second season, but still): an epic family saga spanning three generations while interweaving the stories of one character each time. It’s just so beautifully done, the production is top notch (this being an Apple+ drama with only 8 episodes per season, and it really shows they had a big budget - each period felt so real due to the perfect sets, costumes, props etc.), the OST is superb, and I love how they made it work while using three spoken languages throughout. It’s heartbreaking and wonderful at the same time.
I’m hoping to see a season 3.

The second is MR PLANKTON, where I loved the broken characters and the absurdity of the situations they were placed into. Awesome actors, beautiful cinematography, very emotional watch!

Honorary mentions go to BITTER SWEET HELL for the female characters and breathtaking cinematography (they had the best location scout!). Also not a “comfort watch” or the genre I’d usually pick. 🤔
My C-Drama pick would be the already mentioned WILL LOVE IN SPRING, for that heartbreaking romance and thought-provoking topics. (And the goose. 🪿)

“The best drama of 2024.” I think this prompt needs to be redefined. I think a more thematic or tighter directions are required. To start with, I get confused about what year dramas are released in/shown/belong to. I know some people are good about records, spreadsheets, etc, but that is not me. At the very least, a link to the relevant year end drama posts, that give us the lists of permissible dramas would be useful. And as we go back to further years, it will get more difficult to remember and there will be less people on the site who even have access to watch some of them.
It’s not just the year though, ‘best’ is such a vague word. And if you DO look at 2024’s year end picks, you see that a lot of people had trouble choosing 10, let alone one. And of those 10, there is such a variety of styles. “Best crime drama of the last two years” “My favourite comedy in a year 202X” would give us much tighter parameters to work with and avoid decision paralysis (Romance or Horror? Good OST, or great actors?)
So I will give you The best most tropey drama of 2024 Which may be the best drama, or may not, depending on which day it is. Lovely Runner This drama gave us the best bit of every Romance, The Chase and just kept repeating it until it ran out of episodes. Along the way we got a spurned second lead who lost his memory and got to keep his pride and his friendship intact and a ML who fell first; There was a serial killer, and a white truck of doom; There were gratuitous forearms and a shower scene; There were piggyback rides and being suspiciously coherent about telling secrets while drunk. Also umbrellas, showers of petals, and probably even a shoelace-or a flat battery wheelchair equivalent.
There were other tropey dramas in 2024. Queen of Tears is a strong contender. But QOT has a more confusing storyline. LR keeps the storyline simple. It just repeats permutations of two people meeting in various ways and timelines. QOT has too many messy bad guys with ill-defined motivations. And LR has a better OST.

I'm sad to sat that the best Kdrama of 2024 never happened. For me it was a C-drama. Lost You forever or Joy of Life 2. Sorry Kdrama world, you really bit the big one in 2024.

I went to look at my notes! If I had to choose the best one? Lovely Runner was the best. It was just a pleasure from start to finish.

But I had other favorites that might be my best drama. I got a lot out of:
Knight Flower--Lee Ha-ni is so great as swashbuckling!
Queen of Tears--excellent character development
Mr. Plankton--Woo Do-hwan! Nice job dude.
and especially Good Partner. It was a legal drama about divorce. I have seen three others, and I must say that this was emphatically the good one. I appreciate it when the writers can balance the stories of the week against the narrative arc and character development for the main characters.
I also liked The Trunk enough to hunt down a translation of the novel. The adaptation and the novel had different main characters!

There were a few dramas I really enjoyed last year (not in order of preference):
Death's Game
Marry my Husband
Doctor Slump
Pyramid Game
Midnight Romance in Hagwon
Romance in the House
A Virtuous Business
What Comes After Love
Family by Choice

But the one I enjoyed the most was Jeongnyeon: The Star is born. It was truly a phenomenal drama. The acting, the music, the relationships between the characters... It was out standing.
I really hope Tae Ri wins best actress (even if it's hard to choose because there's also IU with WLGYT). I hope Jeongnyeon will win the grand prize. It really deserves it.