This unheralded show deserves a full measure of praise. I am not sure why I started watching it but it's really terrific.
No major name brand actors and an utterly conventional set-up featuring three heroines who are hitting 30 and angsting about their middle class single lives. So far, so what? Well, for one thing, this has a wonderful literate and inventive script, peppered with wit, sly (and sometimes laugh out loud) humor, and wisdom and insight. There are a host of well-acted supporting characters who engage our attention, no out and out villains but rather so many people striving to do well and occasionally to do right, stumbling as they go. The entertainment industry setting has a certain self conscious sense of ironic navel gazing, but it really doesn't matter. You yearn for our heroines' success, in work, in love, in life, and you follow their adventures with a mixture of anxious anticipation, sympathy and a wide smile on your face. A producer once told me that the reason people watch a television series, as opposed to a movie, is that the characters are being invited into the viewers' homes. In this series, please, extend the invitation.
Before acknowledging the actors and writer in more detail, I want to offer particular thanks to the subtitle team at Viki, where I watched the series. Since this show is set around the genesis and pre-production of a drama series, it has many references to other Korean shows, including impish allusions to the very popular Reply 1988 in which the male lead, Ahn Jae-hong (here playing a successful but put upon drama director called Son Beom-Soo) also appeared. The subtitlers added translator notes to these and many other cultural allusions. In addition, despite the complexity and rapidity of some of the dialog, the translations were literate and almost error-free. A superb job.
Now to the actors: The three lead actresses give wonderful, nuanced performances. None of them are Hallyu royalty, although Jeon Yeo-been, her career launched by her standout performance in After My Death and now (2021) starring in the Netflix series Vincenzo, seems on her way. She plays Lee Eun-jeong, a documentary film maker whose career is on the rise but who continues to be traumatized by the early death of her fiancé from cancer. Chun Woo-hee, previously perhaps the most prominent of the three, leads the way as Im Jin-joo, the scriptwriter who is getting her first shot at having her pilot script, "When You're 30, It Will Be OK", turned into a 16-episode drama. Finally, Han Ji-eun delivers a strong turn as Hwang Han-joo, the single mother whose stock in the marketing company she works for is rising. The three (as well as Han-joo's son) live comfortably with Lee Hyo-bong, Eun-jeong's gay younger brother, sympathetically played by Yoon Ji-on. The scenes among the four, as they confide in and comfort each other, are warm and often hilarious. I especially liked the scene where Han-joo, just to see their reactions, teasingly implies, to her roommates' horror, that she is considering going back to live with her good for nothing ex and the father of her son.
Surrounding them are a substantial cast of other actors and actresses who infuse their characters with depth and substance. It seems unfair to single anyone out, but I feel bound to give it up for Baek Ji-won, playing Jeong Hye-jeong, as Jin-joo's former boss and herself a famous screen writer, whose tough exterior gradually collapses in the face of romance.
This drama was underrated. I can't think why. For a refreshing peak inside the world of KDramas, with a stellar cast at every level and a truly witty script, go for it.
