This series impressed me with its insightful portrayal of gay love. By far, it is one of the best Thai BLs to have been produced in a very, very long time, with one of the best acted as well. And I do not say that for mere puffery. I was completely and totally absorbed by this astonishing historical/fantasy series. This is a drama best experienced by thinking of it as a theater-in-the-round play, rather than a lakorn. Its nuances and chains of events have to be focused on in general, otherwise one could get lost in its details. Perhaps that is its lack, although I found its cinematography uniquely inspiring. It requires a certain embracement of concepts, at least for Westerners, that are esoteric in nature. One must be absorbed by the story itself to appreciate its evolutions.

It is a duology love story that ebbs and flows between two time periods – one in the early 1900s and the other is in the mid 1900s- involving the rebirth of the same characters. Khun Yai (Billy Patchannon) is a mesmerizingly handsome young man, who has been adopted by an influential family in Thailand. Soft-spoken, loyal to his family and government, and well liked not only by his steadfast servants but also by the people in the community for treating others with gentleness and kindness.

One day, as he experiences a traditional Thai dance, he becomes enamored and almost bewitched by a dancer with whom he initially thinks is female. He could not seem to shake the dancer’s image from his mind. But accidental circumstances cause Khun Yai to discover that the beautiful traditional Thai dancer is a handsome male named Kaewta (Babe Tanatat). With his long flowing hair and delicate hand movements, one could easily understand why one would have mistaken him for being a female dancer. This, however, does not deter Khun Yai from pursuing and falling deeply in love with Kaewta. While Kaewta is hesitant to reciprocate for the obvious reasons, he soon falls in love with Khun Yai, as if it had been preordained.

However, the culprit in this story is an age-old one – jealousy. Not just ordinary jealousy but an all-consuming, all-encompassing trigger. Unfortunately, Sophee (Pearl Neilinyah) is also in love with Khun Yai. Although she is his ‘sister’, she is unrelated to him and has harbored a deep love for ‘brother’ Khun Yai for many years. Her jealousy becomes all enraging, and she ends up committing deeds that will lead karma to forever have her reliving lives of bitter resentment and astonishing unhappiness.

This saga, of course, is based upon a three-themed premise. Death, rebirth, and love. Perhaps the production did not always make the timelines so clear nor the story’s transitions self-evident, but honestly, none of that took away from its elegance, at least for me. Its beauty was that Khun Yai and Kaewta were, are, and will always be together as long as there is time. I found their love story so utterly convincing and aesthetically compelling.

The acting in this series is some of the best for a Thai series I have seen in a very long time. The whole love story is approached in soft, genteel tones with whispers of ghostlike figures. However, who is particularly bewitching and intense is Pearl Neilinyah as Sophee. We see her decompensate so compellingly in all her timelines and within each, simply getting more and more out of touch with any sense of reality. Her jealousy simply consumed her and seemed to compound. Pearl’s acting in this role is simply sublime and entrancing. On the one hand, you understand her actions, yet on the other hand, you despise her for it. She becomes a victim of her own worst impulses. She sees no way out for herself other than her own wayward path. While I personally do not believe in the form of Karma that is portrayed here, we can see how, for each of her rebirths, she becomes the worst human being. There was something so sad about her portrayal that there was no way out for her. While not necessarily purely evil, she had simply closed off her mind to any other alternatives and could not wrap her brain around the fact that Khun Yai simply did not love her, whether Kaewta was in his life or not.

I thought this series was unparalleled for several reasons:

1. The story was compelling and told logically, if you followed it closely. Granted, it was difficult at times to discern because of the timeline jumps, but I thought, given the nature of the story, it flowed exceptionally well because they kept the main characters completely consistent. They were who they were in all their timelines.

2. The love story was unafraid to be adult in content and nature. This was a highly unusual Thai BL in the sense that the love making was unabashed and came as close to ‘soft-porn’ as one could. Yet, its physicality was a work of beauty. We got to view the imagined eroticism of two exotically handsome young men unashamedly enjoying themselves. Indeed, these scenes were softly erotic.

3. In addition, their kissing scenes were not just respectful but were astonishingly unfeigned and sincere, leaving us with the impression that these young men were indeed, and in fact, in love with one another, deeply, and were unafraid to kiss like they were a real genuine couple. Kudos for making kissing unabashedly sexy again. And very, very romantic. I have not seen this type of candid passion in a Thai BL in a long time. And it was not done for shock value but simply as part of their love story.

4. Khun Yai was not a hesitant individual who even once wavered in his love for Kaewta. He was willing and able to both intellectually and emotionally defend what he believed was right for him and Kaewta. It was so refreshing to see someone with such convictions stand up to societal norms, his own adopted father, and his family members. Khun Yai was a man of complete integrity, displaying it not just with words but in deeds as well. The same was also true for Kaewta. I think the word is called virtue.

5. The ending to this series, while satisfying, is not Pollyanna. It is thoughtful, logical, filled with fortitude and conviction and with an appreciation of whether the path that was being taken was a righteous one. The story was not necessarily meant to be an entertaining one, but one satisfying a higher purpose- with a karma that was richly merited by both of these men because of how deeply, deeply in love they were with one another, fulfilled in a purely logical way.

This series is also a rarity in the sense that it honestly shows two men ardently in love throughout various time frames whose souls were meant to be together because they truly loved one another. Not only in the obvious physical sense of the word, but also in the intrinsic meaning of the word as well. Both of their personas exuded passion for the other and each was unabashed about that love. However, they paid a heavy price for that devotion and their journeys to the afterlife were not easy.

Whether you believe in rebirth or karma is irrelevant. This story made it feel like it was possible and that their destiny was to be together throughout time. I rarely feel satisfied with watching a series, especially a Thai BL as of late, because they tend to be so formulaic; this one broke all those standards. They presented a genuine thoughtful love story between two men that was honest, sincere, frank, and made to look inevitable. And to a degree, the story made us feel sorry for the antagonist as she seemed fated to be who she was.

Truthfully, I do not understand the criticisms of this series. It is frank and honest and an exceedingly beautifully portrayed period piece. Did it have stereotypical characters? Perhaps, but it was indeed reflective of the times. Gayness in the early 1900s was NOT accepted; rich privileged women were entitled to the man of their dreams. This story merely shows this to be the case. However, Khun Yai and Kaewta fell in love unashamedly in a time when love between two men should not have been and privileged individuals did not necessarily marry for love but for status. Karma had different notions for all of them.

One of the best BLs for 2026 and am glad to say so with complete conviction.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Streaming on- IQIYI