General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

XX (엑스엑스)

XX (엑스엑스; also released as Blue Moon, 블루문) is a 2020 South Korean web drama about Yoon Na-na, the head bartender of a speakeasy bar called XX, whose life is upended when her former best friend Lee Roo-mi buys the bar and becomes her boss.¹ It was co-produced by the terrestrial broadcaster MBC and the web-drama studio Playlist, ran for 10 episodes of about 25 minutes each, and became the first web drama of 2020 to pass 10 million views.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Format	10 episodes, about 25 minutes each; 50-minute versions aired weekly on MBC²^•⁴
Broadcast	MBC January 24 to February 21, 2020; online pre-release on V Live and Naver TV from January 22 and on YouTube from January 29²^•⁵
Production	Co-produced by MBC and Playlist; written by Lee Seul, directed by Kim Jun-mo³^•⁶
Main cast	Hani (Ahn Hee-yeon) as Yoon Na-na, Hwang Seung-eon as Lee Roo-mi, Bae In-hyuk as Park Dan-hee, Lee Jong-won as Wang Jung-deun¹
Viewership	Passed 10 million views during its run, the first web drama of 2020 to do so³^•⁷
Recognition	Special jury prize at the Seoul Drama Awards 2020⁸
Audience rating	7.4/10 on IMDb from 257 users¹

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The story is set in XX, a speakeasy bar with no signage, address, or menu, where drinks are made to order according to what customers desire or feel, and where photographing the interior is prohibited.⁹^•⁴ Yoon Na-na (Hani) is the popular head bartender, who effectively runs the bar because the owner takes no interest in it; her dream is to save enough money to buy XX herself.⁶ When the owner sells the bar, the new owner turns out to be Lee Roo-mi (Hwang Seung-eon), Na-na's best friend from five years earlier, who betrayed her by sleeping with her college boyfriend.¹⁰^•⁹

The supporting cast centers on two men in Na-na's life. Park Dan-hee, nicknamed Danny (Bae In-hyuk), is a bartender at XX who fell for Na-na at first sight and begins to approach her once Roo-mi's arrival reveals new sides of her.⁶ Wang Jung-deun, nicknamed Jayden (Lee Jong-won), is Na-na's roommate and best friend, a fragrance and fashion entrepreneur who knows everything about her and becomes her supporter when she starts taking revenge on cheaters.⁶ The drama's themes are friendship, infidelity, revenge, and reconciliation with the past; Na-na, who once could not get angry at the boyfriend who hurt her, becomes a "bad girl" who takes revenge on behalf of other women hurt by love.⁶

Production and release

A dual-format release. Playlist produced the series as a mid-form web drama, with 25-minute episodes pre-released on V Live, Naver TV, Facebook, and YouTube, while 50-minute versions aired once a week on MBC.⁴ Online pre-release began on January 22, 2020 on the V Live and Naver TV Playlist channels, with the YouTube Playlist channel following from January 29; the MBC broadcast ran from January 24 to February 21, 2020.⁵^•² It was the first Playlist work co-produced and simulcast with a terrestrial broadcaster, and the studio's first mid-form drama.¹¹^•¹² The co-production split production costs and promotion between the partners, a departure from the usual arrangement in which a broadcaster outsources production and keeps most of the rights and revenue.¹³

The screenplay was written by Lee Seul, the writer of the web series Love Playlist, which had accumulated over 500 million views across its seasons.¹⁴ For Hani, a member of the girl group EXID who had signed with Sublime Artist Agency in October 2019 to pursue acting, XX was her first leading role, after earlier appearances in the series The Producers (2015) and the film Run-Off (2016).⁵

Reception

The series drew steady real-time search interest, ranked first in its timeslot, and entered the top ten in TV drama buzzworthiness, records described in the Korean press as writing a new chapter for web dramas.⁷ It passed 10 million views while still airing on its web channels, and its success extended Playlist's audience beyond its core teens and twenties viewers to viewers in their thirties and older.³^•¹¹ MBC's program page records a special jury prize at the Seoul Drama Awards 2020.⁸

Reviewers praised the chemistry between the two female leads and the friendship between Na-na and Jayden, along with the restrained, dark-toned visual style and the soundtrack.¹⁵^•¹⁶ Critics were not uniform: one Indonesian review found the pacing dull and the acting of the lead surface-level while singling out Hwang Seung-eon's performance as the strongest.¹⁷ The series later appeared on Soompi's list of the ten web dramas that marked 2020.¹⁸

Significance for Playlist

Playlist, a digital content studio founded in May 2017 with investment from Naver subsidiaries Naver Webtoon and Snow, counted XX among its representative works alongside A-TEEN and Love Playlist.¹¹ The drama's success was attributed by the studio to full pre-production, a script that held up, and a multi-channel strategy that erased the boundary between web and TV channels; the company also ran tie-in marketing, partnering with a subscription alcohol service to offer cocktails featured in the drama.⁷ After XX, Playlist announced plans to produce more mid-form dramas simulcast with television.¹²

Where to watch

The series has been available on legal streaming services including PlayList Global, Prime Video, and Kocowa.² As of late 2026, JustWatch lists OnDemandKorea and the Kocowa Amazon Channel as current streaming options in the United States.¹⁹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › East Asian web and streaming serials › Titles Sp to Z

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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