This is a drama that sounds like a hallmark rom-com; a city girl who focuses a lot on frames and her career moves to a beautiful small town and meets a scruffy local men that she falls in love with. But this is actually a slice-of-life story. It’s overflowing with warm feelings and wonderful, deep and imperfect characters that you will fall in love with along the way. It’s almost like a warm drink on a rainy day in kdrama form. Hometown Cha Cha Cha is one of those dramas that really moved me from the very first episode as there was something so cozy and homely about them that just gripped me by the heartstrings and would not let me go.

The story may not be big but it seems to be enough there that the story never drags it’s legs or or goes into endless circles with the plot. It spends a good time with all the characters and the introspection of those characters that takes place within the drama.

Hometown Cha Cha Cha strikes a pretty good balance between having a story that is constantly moving forward while also capturing this mundane life and the quiet moments as we follow all of these different characters and their lives in this small community where everyone knows everyone.

All the characters we meet on our way through the story are interesting and it’s fun to watch them and their impact on each other’s lives. Everyone has their own burdens and baggage’s in life that the drama manages to explore quite well. Watching people’s walls break down over time and people face their demons without it ever dragging too long or being too dramatic.

We get to see the different sides of most of all the characters and how complex and human they are. Each episode of the drama is more than an hour long, which I usually do moan about, but here I hardly felt it. Because I enjoyed the time with the characters so much.

There is almost this subdued suspense that is there all the way through the story. It never get’s too big, too dramatic or too ahead of itself. It captures this feeling that life can be messy but it’s also just a series of moments that pass and fade over time really well. Some moments are wonderful, warm and calm but some cruel and sad. But life still goes on somehow. The message of the story and the story itself is not much bigger than that, but it works really well.

So much of the romance, but also just the friendship that is going on, is just about the individual’s personal boundaries and the communication between them. Everything about how the romance was built radiated comfort and warmth in my opinion, which I found really sweet and just pleasant to watch. Like everything about the drama was. Shin Min Ah and Kim Seon Ho, as well as all the other actors, fill their characters with life and emotions.

There is also a really good balance between the love stories within the drama and the other stories that deal more with people’s personal lives and their position in life. The love story will never be too sappy, which would not suit this type of story, but rather it seem more human and sensible. Even if misunderstandings occur it is quickly worked out and one can understands the reason why the character act a certain way because they story has worked for it. These people are complex and you get to see them from many angles.

The love story is still a very big part of the story; both when it comes to the main characters and the supporting characters. But even though the story is about them falling in love, it is also so much about these characters learning to love themselves as well as the other characters around them. But the drama also deals with loads of different themes such as loneliness in old age, divorce, there is a lgbt character, and many other things that crop up as we go through the lives of the characters of this small town as this is ultimately a story about the community.