“Honey Sir” Series Review (Ep.1 to 8)

I’m not going to be so dramatic as to say Honey Sir will help you believe in love again, but it damn near comes close.

This Chinese BL series is produced by Blued, the gay dating app, and was previously it was only available on the app itself. The last series I watched that was produced by Blued was short and uncomplicated with its heart in the right place, but Honey Sir, I think, does it better.

Honey Sir is a complilation of seven short films, each focusing on a different couple and a different relationship, all of which are based on real-life experiences of gay men in the early 2010s. The themes are different – there is an office romance, a long distance relationship, stories of loss and growth. It’s all part of human experience, only told through the lense of homosexual relationships, and I really enjoyed what it was trying to do.

The first story, for instance, is a coming out narrative, which, yes, I think we have all grown used to seeing in BL series at this point, and yet, I personally never get tired of seeing them. You can never have too much acceptance, you know? Every time a parent is supportive in a BL, an angel gets its wings.

The other stories, like the first one, also follow the traditional cliches of BL story plots – friends who have secret crushes on each other but won’t reveal it for fear of jeopardising the friendship but ultimately reunite by chance years later; misunderstanding that causes one person to think the other is cheating on him, only to reveal that he was not and a happy ending there too; a couple that is in love and think of raising a child together – most of the stories are heartwarming and wholesome. The bittersweet story that deals with the grief and pain of losing a loved one hits hard as well, especially in a world that’s as uncertain as the one we live in today.

Of course, everything isn’t perfect about Honey Sir – at the end of the day, it is meant to advertise Blued, after all, so some of the acting performances are a little iffy, and the scripts are sometimes a little too cliched, but the stories manage to contain themselves within their twenty minute time slots. I recommend watching it on a day when you just want an emotional but uncomplicated watch to remind yourself that there is goodness in the world.

Rating: 3.5/5