Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Daily Dose Of Sunshine’ On Netflix, About A Young Nurse Who Brings A Sunny Disposition To A Hospital’s Psychiatric Ward

How often have you seen a medical procedural center on a hospital’s psychiatric department? Not often, right? A new series from South Korea takes place in that very department, with weekly cases that are presented to a positive-thinking new nurse and her colleagues.

DAILY DOSE OF SUNSHINE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A window lights up in a house that looks like it’s floating on a cloud. A woman wakes up and puts on a video from a series called Brainfix.

The Gist: Jung Da-eun (Park Bo-young) is up early to start her first day as a nurse in the psychiatric department of Myongshin University Hospital. She’s a third-year nurse who transferred over from the internal medicine department, upon the suggestion of the head nurse of that department. Her mother tries to get her to drink a smoothie on the way out, thinking she’s not eating enough.

When she arrives, the head nurse, Song Hyo-shin (Lee Jung-eun) takes her on a tour and reminds her that lanyards and fine-tipped metal pens aren’t allowed. The rest of the nurses, including her former nursing school classmate, wonder why she transferred from internal medicine.

When the doctors do their rounds, she runs into Dr. Hwang Yeo-hwan (Chang Ryul), her tutor during nursing school; he wants to know if she transferred to the psychiatric department because of him, and she insisted she didn’t.

The first patient Da-eun takes care of is Oh Ri-na (Jung Woon-seon), who is brought in by her mother due an incident where the woman took off her clothes in public and started dancing. Her behavior is consistent with someone with bipolar disorder, but Ri-na insists she’s fine and being held against her will. For an involuntary hold, her mother forges the signature of her son-in-law, a judge, but then is sent out to get the judge to sign.

One thing that Da-eun learns is to listen to the emotions behind a patient’s words, a lesson she learns the hard way with Ri-na. Dr. Hwang helps her, along with her best friend and former roommate, Song Yoo-chan (Jang Dong-yoon), who flunked out of nursing school even though Dr. Hwang tutored him at the same time he tutored Da-eun.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Daily Dose Of Sunshine feels a bit like Grey’s Anatomy without all the romance, crossed with a slight amount of Scrubs-esque silliness.

Our Take: Daily Dose Of Sunshine, based on the book Morning Comes To Psychiatric Wards, is about as pure a procedural as Korean dramas get. There may be some pieces of story that continue from week to week, but for the most part, Da-eun and the rest of the psychiatric department will be dealing with a new case or two per week, and Da-eun’s preternaturally sunny disposition will help her in a department that’s tough for a new nurse to navigate.

The series is supposed to be a comedy, as we see when one of the doctors, Kong Cheol-woo, (Lim Jae-hyuk), who is suffering through hemorrhoids, sees Dong Go-geun (Yeon Woo-jin), a patient who thinks he has OCD because he’s always cracking the joints on his hand. When he finally gets his ‘roids treated, he’s very surprised by the doctor who is treating him.

It’s pretty obvious that both Koong and Dong are there for comedic relief, as is Song Yoo-chan. At least Yoo-chan is there to give Da-sun some helpful advice and have some heartfelt moments with her, as the two of them have come to lean on each other over the years.

The idea, though, is that the comedic moments will be balanced by emotional and dramatic moments, like when Ri-na talks about why she hates that her mother always gives her grapes to eat as an example of how she’s let other people define who she is her entire life. Just how that balances might vary from episode to episode, but the heartfelt moments feel both earned and sincere, which helps.

Sex and Skin: We see a slight bit of nudity as Ri-na has one of her breaks where she strips down in public.

Parting Shot: At lunch, Da-sun overhears her old head nurse talk to her current head nurse; she finds out that the reason why the switch to psychiatry was recommended was that she was “too nice.”

Sleeper Star: Jang Dong-yoon’s character Song Yoo-chan has to be goofy at times, wise at others, and that’s a difficult thing to pull off.

Most Pilot-y Line: What we hope is that the patients’ mental health conditions are taken with the seriousness they deserve, as it seems that there is some talk about how Ri-na became sick, when it feels like that’s a potentially reductive way to talk about bipolar disorder.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Daily Dose Of Sunshine is a well-meaning heartfelt procedural that takes place in a part of a hospital you don’t often see portrayed on many medical series.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.