After creating hundreds of live-action BL series, TV producers in Thailand have turned their attention to live-action yuri, spurred by the breakout success of GAP: The Series, which racked up millions of views on YouTube due to the chemistry between its two leads, Sarocha Chankimha (“Freen”) and Rebecca Patricia Armstrong (“Becky”).

Two new series, one already released and the other still in production, illustrate different approaches to satisfying this newfound demand.

Show Me Love: The Series was one of the first out of the gate, but was hobbled by being originally released on a for-pay streaming service. After complaints from fans, its production company, GrandTV, is now re-editing and re-releasing it for YouTube, beginning with “Part 1 of episode 1” at the time of writing the first six episodes (out of nine) are available for viewing. (At time of pot, the first 7 episodes are available!)

Show Me Love was created by a company that puts on beauty pageants, stars two former beauty pageant contestants (with a host of other contestants in supporting roles) and has a plot about competing in a beauty pageant. It even includes scenes that feature fans shipping the contestants and criticizing ships that appear fake.

This last is an inadvertent self-own, as Show Me Love’s fatal flaw is the weakness of the relationship between the two leads: Engfa Waraha as Meena, a country girl come to the big city, gives a much more expressive and appealing performance than Charlotte Austin as Cherine, a former contestant returning to try for a first victory. As a result, their interactions often come across as flat and even forced, especially in the earlier episodes. The show’s relative paucity of views compared to GAP reflects that weakness.

Yet to be filmed is Be Mine: The Series from IS Entertainment, a new production company, although an Official Prologue was released to YouTube a few months ago. (It has over 1.5 million views thus far.) Be Mine is based on four linked novels, Be My Baby, More & More, Be My Sugar, and Be My Boo by Khun Phuying (คุณผู้หญิง) and is planned to be adapted into a 16-episode series, four episodes per couple.

IS Entertainment is attempting to replicate the winning playbook followed by IdolFactory, the producers of GAP: release a pilot to get feedback and adjust accordingly, keep fans interested and involved by releasing a flood of show-related content (including behind-the-scenes YouTube videos, Instagram photos, and TikTok snippets showing interactions between the young women portraying the couples), and monetize through product sponsorships and fan meets.

IS Entertainment is going even further than IdolFactory in explicitly seeking to promote LGBTQ-related issues via the show and its fandom. As part of their celebration of Pride Month they even brought in a professor to hold a “gender seminar” to present “Queer 101“ facts and concepts to the cast and selected fans.

The company has also cast Montana Chuthatus (“Gene”), a trans woman, in a supporting role in the show; she’ll appear in flashbacks as the former partner of Peak (played by IS Entertainment CEO Namhom Atchareeya), the proprietor of a café that the four couples frequent. Thai TV shows have a reputation for having trans actors give exaggerated performances, often for comic relief. (GAP is guilty of this, as is Show Me Love to a certain extent.) Given IS Entertainment’s track record thus far, I’m confident that this won’t be the case with Be Mine.

But in the end the success of Be Mine, like that of GAP and Show Me Love, will be determined primarily by the on-screen romantic chemistry of its leads. Such chemistry can be discovered, as it was when Freen and Becky appeared in small roles in an earlier IdolFactory production; it remains to be seen whether it can be workshopped.

Ratings for Show Me Love:

Production quality – 7
Story – 2  Do you enjoy watching reality shows about beauty pageants? Me neither
Characters – 4  Heidi Amanda Jensen plays a delightfully bitchy contestant
Service – 3  Revealing but SFW pageant gowns
Yuri – 4  Through episode 6, longing gazes, two almost kisses, and a wedding dress dream sequence

Overall – 3  If I hadn’t been reviewing this I would have stopped after the second episode

It’s premature to rate Be Mine: the Series, especially since one of the roles has been recast since the pilot.