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Two new cable drama series smash weekly TV chart

September 19, 2018

SEOUL, Sept. 19 (Yonhap) — Two television series on cable channels tvN and OCN made strong debuts on the weekly TV chart by taking the top two spots, data showed Wednesday.

“Dear Husband of 100 Days,” also known as “100 Days My Prince,” on tvN rose to the top on its first week of broadcast with a Content Power Index (CPI) score of 281.6 for Sept. 10-16. OCN’s “The Guest” came second with a score of 267.8.

“Dear Husband of 100 Days” had been highly anticipated among K-pop fans, as D.O. of popular boy group EXO plays the lead role.

The series, set in the Joseon era (1392-1910), features an interesting love story between an unlikely couple: the prince — D.O. — loses his memory following an accident and gets to marry the country’s oldest single woman, who doesn’t know her husband’s true identity and thinks him useless and completely out of touch with reality.

In the series, he plays two different characters — Prince E-yul and his amnesiac alter-ego Won-deuk — convincingly and with humor.

The romantic comedy develops fast and successfully grabs the viewers’ attention. Its viewership rating pushed past seven percent for its fourth episode Tuesday.

A poster of “Dear Husband of 100 Days” is shown in this image provided by tvN. (Yonhap)

Meanwhile, “The Guest” is a rare TV show on the subject of exorcism combined with Korean traditional shamanism. There have been Korean films about the subject but not much on the small screen.

The appearance together of two actors, Kim Dong-wook and Kim Jae-wook, for the first time in 11 years since the popular series “The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince,” is considered another factor drawing audience interest.

The CPI, created by CJ E&M and Nielsen Korea, measures the level of popularity, social media presence and influence on consumer behavior of entertainment TV programs aired on three major terrestrial networks — MBC, SBS and KBS — and seven cable channels owned by CJ E&M — including tvN, Mnet and OCN — during prime time. JTBC, another cable network that airs some highly popular entertainment shows and dramas, is not included in the measurement.