One of the most vanilla BL series we’ve had in a while but I must say, I enjoyed it as it had some interesting moments and had 3 couples that were distinct and entertaining.
Sure, it is certainly not perfect, but World Y Entertainment put a very decent product that did not need to rely on having unrealistic plots, excessive surprises/plot twists, or the usual clichés we always expect to see in Thai BLs (and, by now, I think we kinda expect it in almost every BL).

The plot is quite simple, university students from the Faculty of Sport Science trying to navigate through their university life and finding love in the process. Three couples (one being more of a triangle) that focus on a different sport: basketball, soccer, and running. The usual side characters that bring some problems to the main actors are there as well but unlike previous BLs where the side characters are the usual crazy and jealous female, the rival love interest, or the excessively loud shipper squad, “You’re My Sky” focused on having a bit more mature side characters which made this story more likeable albeit more vanilla, as I think we were all expecting one of the chaotic characters to appear and disrupt the flow of the story and one (or more) of the couples but in the end, I’m glad the writer and the director followed the original source more or less faithfully, to bring this story… for once, I’m happy for vanilla with sprinkles because we’ve had too many BL disasters lately that failed just because they couldn’t stop adding to the plot mess, so this series saved itself from that.

What worked:

1) The couples: While the 3 couples were not completely flawless and in interviews with Youtubers a few of the actors have shown a slightly different personality and chemistry with their on-screen partner (more on that later), I think these 3 couples did a good job portraying their character but most importantly, clearly marking the differences inside their own couple and also with the other 2 couples.
The lead couple is Fah and Torn who are childhood friends who meet by chance as Torn is normally left alone at home and Fah begins talking to him and starts sharing his basketball knowledge which leads Torn to also love the sport. Basketball is their common interest and after Torn is finally let out to play with Fah, they practice all the time and set their goal on joining the Thai National team. They are both rejected from the junior national team by Coach Tuen but as both go to the same university (Fah is older) that fuels their passion for basketball even more. The rest of their story deals with Torn and Fah joining their university team (composed of non-basketball players, except Fah’s little brother who returned from abroad) and learning how to play together as a team to win the school’s title. Then Fah getting an offer from a club in the Thai league that brings problems for the couple as he is never home and Torn suffering a serious injury that requires surgery and a long layoff but he decides to contact Coach Tuen only for him to turn into a jerk, realize his mistake, apologize and move on. Fah graduates and Torn gets an offer to try out for Fah’s club. In the process they realize they love each other, move in together and become boyfriends.

The second couple is Saen and Ai with Saen being a freshman and Torn’s friend and deciding from the very beginning that he likes Ai, a senior and Fah’s friend. Saen is a star soccer player and Ai is the only one in this series that doesn’t play any sport but he is always there supporting the events of the faculty. At first, Ai is quite flustered as he doesn’t believe Saen’s flirting is for real until he begins to lower his guard and realizes that not only Saen is being sincere but also that he is feeling the same towards him. Saen is quite pushy but gets rejected all the time until Ai relents a little and accepts his feelings for him. The rest of the story involves all the usual lovey-dovey stuff that Saen does to show Ai he really and truly likes him, Ai acting tough at first but then becoming soft and mushy himself. The only big issue this couple has is that Ai applied to go to Japan to continue his studies and gets accepted, doesn’t tell Saen, they argue a bit, then he has doubts if he really wants to go and leave Saen alone and have a long-distance relationship… but unlike many BL series, this couple DOES talk to each other and after sharing their feelings and decide that Ai will go to Japan and they will have a long-distance relationship.

The third couple, and in my opinion, the most interesting one, is Vee and Dome. Dome is a senior in a relationship with Vee’s older sister, Pan. Dome and Vee never really interact until Pan mentions that she will like it if her boyfriend and her brother would get along and, at the same time, an injury in the running squad, forces Vee to join the relay team with Dome. In there, they begin to form a bond as both realize that their feelings for each other are too strong to ignore. However, the whole series has them discovering they like each other, Vee experiencing the guilt of falling in love with his sister’s boyfriend, keeping their interactions to the minimum (which causes Vee to miss the baton in the relay race and hyperventilate because of the anxiety and the stress), getting drunk at the beach and kissing each other only to be discovered by Pan, Vee ignoring his feelings for Dome and avoid him for months until graduation when they talk (pushed by Pan who is no longer mad or resentful at Dome or Vee) and establish that Vee still has feelings for Dome and that Dome will continue to wait for him, so they both leave the door open for a future relationship.

2) The acting (not all, but most of it): As I said, the series is not perfect, but I feel the acting of some of the actors really helps “You’re My Sky” a lot, especially Kris (playing Dome) and Porsche (playing Vee) are the best, in my opinion. Not only their acting is the most difficult of all 3 couples but also they have to navigate through a lot of different emotions and situations like being awkward at first since they didn’t use to talk despite Dome being Pan’s boyfriend, moving to being friendly as they begin to train together and start discovering things in common, moving to being careful/confused as they realize they are experiencing some feelings they might not be supposed to have, moving to both feeling guilty, Vee because he thinks he is betraying his sister and Dome because he never tells Pan the truth until she discovers them kissing, moving to melancholy of Vee avoiding Dome and Dome not being able to talk to Vee as he tries to respect his feelings. Both Kris and Porsche were properly coached and directed and were able to convince me of their emotions during their scenes up to the point that I was clamoring for them to have more screen time over the other 2 couples.
The other actors have some good moments as well, Suar (playing Torn) has to also navigate through different emotions of joining the university to play with his idol and childhood hero, discovering he might be in a relationship with a girl, clearing that out when Fah realizes he likes Torn and confesses to him, to being jealous of Fah when he joins the Thai club and he can’t because of his injury, to being a jerk to his teammates after Coach Tuen helps him recover from his injury, to realizing he is ok if he is not the best as long as he can rely on his teammates and play with Fah. While Jump (playing Ai) deals with constant flirting of Saen, putting up a wall, breaking a little when he realizes he does like Saen after all, accepting his advances, becoming boyfriends, having to deal with leaving to study abroad, having the uncertainty of a long-distance relationship, feeling happy because he really does love Saen and can make this relationship work after all. Both actors were good, but not as consistent as Kris and Porsche were in their acting.
Apple (playing Pan) was also great in her role of loving girlfriend of Dome and supporting sister of Vee to slowly realizing Dome might not love her as much as she loves him, discovering her brother and boyfriend kissing, dealing with the anger and confusion towards Dome and Vee, and becoming understanding of their situation and even trying to push them to be together in the final episode. A good example of what a good female support character can bring to a BL story when used correctly and without her having to throw tantrums, do crazy things, run around screaming and whining all the time, or trying to sabotage the guys’ relationship by doing stupid things. She was just mature, calm and always reasoned with logic.

What didn’t work:

1) Some of the plot: I appreciate the fact that we had some sports mixed in the series as the usual university setting had at least some change. However, basketball dominated the series almost entirely with at least 2 full episodes (one with the university tournament and one with Fah vs. Torn in the Thai club league) and portions of other episodes being dedicated to basketball. I understand Fah and Torn are the main couple but I believe Saen had about half of an episode where he actually had a soccer game and Vee/Dome had some portions of a few episodes dedicated to their training for the relay race and the actual race probably took 3 minutes of one episode. So, I love basketball, but it was a bit disappointing to have the series giving so much relevance to the sport over the other two. And, they tend to rely a bit too much on flashbacks, especially for Fah and Torn’s past and time jumps. Torn’s injury was supposed to take at least 9 months to heal and by bringing Coach Tuen that went down to 7… but we saw all that recovery in about 5 minutes of episode 11. Then, in episode 12, they are graduating and it’s implied that weeks have gone by since Vee talked to Dome and in the same episode, Ai comes back from Japan to surprise Saen and join the commencement ceremony but it never felt like a lot of time went by.

2) Some of the side characters: Coach Tuen is a jerk and a bully and I understand that due to the lack of the crazy female character or the male love rival, the story needed a sort of villain… but his actions were almost too cartoonish and predictable. Coach Big is too soft and friendly with the players so if I was a part of his team, I wouldn’t feel too motivated. As a side note, it was odd to see Khoo (playing Coach Big) as during the first few episodes of this series, he was still being featured as Jean, a French pâtissier who is the ex-boyfriend of Singto’s character in “Baker Boys”, so having him as a chef and basketball coach for a little bit, was a bit disconcerting. The other side characters were there but didn’t provide too much substance. The university basketball team had nice moments with Fah and Torn as all know they are together but don’t push them to confess and some give good advice to Torn when he is dealing with some issues but other than that, they don’t factor as major plot changers in the story.

3) A bit of the acting: Tae’s (playing Fah) acting remains a bit of the weakest link in this story. His acting in “Y-Destiny” was quite bad along with Chap (now acting in “The Tuxedo”) and here Tae has not improved much. His tone remains the same in almost every situation, he seems tense while doing some scenes and even a bit awkward when doing mushy scenes like quick pecks on Torn’s cheeks or hugging him. At the same time, he was not always present during interviews with the rest of the cast and his chemistry with Suar was not totally there. Boom (playing Saen) also felt a bit off as well as his flirty nature was ok but his facial expressions weren’t strong enough to convince me during the more serious moments he had in the series. And in interviews, he seems quite introverted as he barely talks and his interactions with Jump look awkward as well.

In the end “You’re My Sky” turned out to be a fairly standard BL series with solid acting and an almost ordinary plot that was nothing super exciting or overly dramatic… but in times when we’ve had several plot disasters, writing/directing chaos, and/or bad acting that have ruined many BL series (see some of my other reviews to find out which series I’m talking about), this series brought a bit of a vanilla storytelling that was needed and even appreciated to reset a bit and forget all previous disasters and hopefully get better stories in the future and they added some interesting parts like the Vee/Dome relationship that was probably the best of all 3 couples but had the least amount of screentime.