omonatheydid | New travel variety show on tvN

My favorite variety PD (that’d be ex-1 Night 2 Days PD Na Young-seok, or Na PD) is back with a brand new show for cable. Woot. It’s called, hilariously, Grandpas Over Flowers, and it even has a “flower grandpa F4″ cast, because as we know, good things always come in fours. It’s admittedly stretching the flower-boy concept a little far, but the title did get a laugh out of me.

After closing out the first season of 1 Night 2 Days, Na PD developed The Human Condition for KBS, and then left the network to join fellow ex-1N2D writers and PDs over at CJ E&M. He’s finally launching his first show for tvN, which is getting ready to premiere in July. I can’t say that tvN’s other forays into variety have been worth writing home about, but maybe there’s hope yet.

Grandpas Over Flowers will be a travel variety show with cast members (from left to right in the picture above): Lee Soon-jae (Childless Good Fortune, The King 2 Hearts), Park Geun-hyung (The Chaser, King of Dramas), Baek Il-sub (Be Strong Mr. Kim, Ojakkyo Brothers), and Shin Gu (Hundred Year Inheritance, Feast of the Gods). The average age among the cast is 74, but wouldn’t you know it — 74 is also the average number of dramas on their resumes. Wut.

The show’s concept will be “backpacking in the twilight years,” and will take the foursome all over Europe on backpacking trips. The backbone is a familiar “real road variety” setup a la 1N2D, led by mat-hyung Lee Soon-jae (it cracks me up that even though everyone else would call these men “Teacher” out of respect, they’ll probably call each other hyung/dongseng, which will be adorable). I do wish these travel variety shows would stop going abroad, but I guess traveling in Korea kind of encroaches on 1N2D turf? I don’t know, the way that show’s going lately, maybe I’d rather they let the Gramps F4 take it for a spin. Hell, in dramaland, these guys practically run the country.

The cast and crew will head to France for their first trip in June, and the show will premiere in early July on tvN.

Source: dramabeans via osen