DEEP NIGHT – 2024 – Thailand

BLISS RATING: ★★★★★

“If you understood love, you would never hurt someone else’s love.” –  Quote from Deep Night

This is a surprisingly and shockingly smart, articulate, and very well-done BL with loads of moral precepts that I was not expecting. In other words, I loved this series through and through. It is very adult-like and tackles some sensitive issues in a vailed way that you have to peel away like an onion. The screenplay is very impressive. Sure, it has its weak moments, but they are few and far between and do not deflect from its core message.

It is a story about prostitution, specifically male prostitution. While it is not called that here, it is that. Perhaps not in the terminology we are used to, but in essence it is. Both men and women pay for services from a ‘host’ at a club. They ‘pay’ high prices for drinks and the company of beautiful men that they can certainly take advantage of in many non-sexual but still invasive ways. In other words, it becomes pleasurable and sensual in a covert way but dangerously close to being overt. While it might be legal, it still can be degrading and demeaning and dangerous if not constantly policed and monitored.

The club is called Deep Night, which is a legitimate establishment, playing by the rules where nothing ‘illegal’ goes on. And as an added attraction, they have acrobatic performances that enhances the individual host’s appeal. Along with other various incentives, your ranking can make you a very rich person, if you can learn to smile and be friendly and tolerate all kinds of individuals. Some customers simply want company while others want more. This is a story of the running of Deep Night.

However, their story is convoluted by the fact that a cardinal rule among the hosts is that they are not permitted to have relationships with each other. Initially, that seems reasonable as the issue of jealousy could rear its ugly head, especially in dealing with some forward and assertive bar patrons.

And that is what happens when the owner of Deep Night, Freya (Tanya Tanyares Engtrakul) decides to groom her young son, Khem (Shogun Paramee) to take over the business. Initially, disinterested, he becomes enamored with one of the hosts there, who happens to be a classmate of his in college named Wela (First Piyangkul). Before long, they are impassioned into a torrid affair that is really genuinely a loving one. They both fall deeply in love with each other but not before going through some strong painful strains of maturity. Both needing to grow emotionally.

There are, of course, other characters in this story with equally and very fascinating outcomes as well. The relationship between the two hosts, Senji (Seagames Teerapat) and Ken (Chalarm Siam) is a captivating one. Long simmering but never boiling over until another individual enters the picture. He happens to be the good friend of Khem who is hired as a waiter but becomes integral to the club. It does not take long for Pan (Neptune Bhurichon) to fall hard for Senji with jealousy raging with Ken. How they resolve that is both fascinating and brilliant. And I loved it. Is it a solution for everyone? No! But for them in this case and under these circumstances, it works! And I am so glad that they did not shy away from presenting it or showing it. Kudos for taking this step. It is long overdue to see a creative way for an alternative solution for people who equally share a love for one another. Without moral or ethical judgments.

Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series?  Sublimely, this is a well-acted series by all. It could easily have drifted into a farce but did not. The subject matter was presented with great sensitivity, and I appreciated the actors and actresses approaching the subject matter in a more mature and serious manner. However, who I think stands out in his scenes is Neptune Bhurichon as Pan. He is effervescent and the characterization of this persona seemed so sincere. Plus, you can see him grow and struggle with the realization that Senji and Ken were really in love with each othe; he does not want to rob that from them. And his matter-of-fact solution is not only creative but is reflective perhaps of the changing attitudes of the time about sex and sexual relationships. He seemed that he was passed the torch to a new way of thinking in the BL world, which in and of itself was dynamic.

Obviously, there is so much more to this story than a few words can describe. It broaches the underbelly of the seeder side of the adult entertainment industry in Thailand but in a nice way. Despite the happy endings and the passionate love making between astonishingly handsome men, it is not all a bed of roses. They tried to paint a ‘nice’ picture, but it seems like a giant façade, fooling everyone but deceiving no one.

This series tackled directly the following moral arcs:

1. How you effectively deal with sex between employer and employee.
2. How you straddle the adult entertainment industry without compromising completely a set of moral and ethical standards.
3. How you convince society that, even if the job is not considered mainstream, it still has integrity and worth and you can maintain both even while performing your adult entertainment role.
4. It adroitly and forthrightly presented an alternative lifestyle for individuals who are deeply in love with each other and want to remain in love with each other.
5. It provided comfort and decency to winning over acceptance of family and showed the force family plays in the development of your own thinking and behavior.

Were they successful in adequately dealing with all these thorny issues? Perhaps not but they at least made an attempt to rectify, modernize, and think out of the box. Most importantly, they did not shove the issues under the rug and pretend they were not there but tried to deal with them.

I cannot say that the characters were all happy in this series, but they made their circumstances work. The reality is they know their time doing what they are doing is finite. In other words, they took lemons and made lemonade out of it. This is indeed a very adult series and not your typical BL pablum fed premise. It presents its story squarely to you. Still a bit sanitized but nonetheless more realistic and honest than a lot of other BLs out there.

And for that, it deserves our praise and kudos! Well done for presenting an adult story through an entertaining prism.