“The Greatest Love” is a TV mini-series written by the Hong sisters, perhaps their best. It’s about the tangled romantic relationships between an arrogant self-centered superstar, a washed up girl idol with a heart of gold, a successful manipulative girl idol, and a doctor naive of the entertainment industry. On one sense the series writes itself, no bets on who ends up with whom.

The Greatest Love is a mixture of romance, farce, and social comment. There are some strong romantic moments, particularly effective is the end of the last but one episode, where it all comes together for the heroine. There are some fine scenes of farce and comic misunderstandings, which Kong Hyo-Jin as the eccentric heroine plays to the hilt. Worth watching just for that.

The Greatest Love is set in the Korean entertainment industry, and portrays that as an artificial construction of artificialities. Image is everything, not reality, as exemplified by two of the leads having a sham relationship just for the benefit of contracts. Perhaps the series says it’s really what in the heart that matters, and the hero does have a change of heart in more ways than one.

The Greatest Love also features the Internet, and how extreme opinions are fostered by that superficial medium. How apparently meek and caring individuals will express cruel hateful words in the electronic world. How such unimportant utterances can have great effects.