“Us The Series” is a story of a romance built on deception.

Dokrak, or Rak (Bonnie Pattraphus), works at a coffee shop, having taken a gap year after high school to find herself. She meets Pam (Emi Thasorn), a dentistry student, and falls for her immediately. Unfortunately for her love story, her brother Kawi (Sing Harit) too falls for Pam at first sight, and noticing her love for art, he asks Rak to draw pictures of Pam to court her. Rak falls further for Pam even as she continues the deception of the drawings and encourages Pam to date her brother. What she doesn’t know is that Pam has secrets of her own, which may threaten to pull them apart.

From the onset, one thing I would absolutely recommend anyone who reads this- please give this a try beyond the first episode. The first episode is, admittedly, frustratingly slow paced. I was finding myself unconsciously shaking my legs in impatience. Despite expositing a lot, it takes a while for the narrative to find its flow. The ending, though, introduced an unexpected plot point that completely changed the way I felt moving forward.

Rak and Pam make for an endearing couple so far, Rak is a bumbling mess in front of the girl she likes, and Pam’s icy and reserved demeanour melts when the two are together.

The cinematography and lighting are noteworthy- they frame the setting in a soft manner to support the narrative and give the show an almost nostalgic tint. I loved the scenes set in the rain, not just because rain is by itself a classic romantic motif, but the cinematography really shined in those scenes.

Now onto something I am conflicted about; I have a love/hate relationship with the pacing. It starts off on a slow crawl as mentioned above, but as I finished episode 3, it felt like I was on a bullet train, speeding at hundreds of kilometres an hour. The pacing is enough to give anyone a whiplash. I had to recheck to make sure the series is the standard 12 episodes, and not shorter, given how fast things are progressing already.

Without spoiling too much about the show, some conversations that I had presumed would happen in a much later episode, already happened by episode 3. That does make it intriguing, to think about where the plot will go from here on out.

Many questions have already been answered, but there are more raised with recent developments in the show. If you get past the pacing, this one’s worth a watch.

Rating- 3.75 out of 5

Streaming on- GMMTV YouTube Channel