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Pierce Conran

Lead cast: Lee Sun-bin, Kang Tae-oh, Lee Hak-joo
Latest Nielsen rating: 1.8 per cent
Most countries have a staple food that might be considered the national fuel – a cheap, readily available starch that most people will rely on for the energy needed to get them through the day. France has bread, Italy has pasta, and many countries in Asia, including South Korea, rely on rice.
Unlike Ireland, the potato may not be a daily staple in Korea, but new drama The Potato Lab posits the tuberous vegetable as an essential backbone of the country.


Flowers are a familiar sight in K-dramas, most often in the form of bright spring streets lined with cherry trees in blossom. This show opens on a resplendent pastoral view – a field of blooming potato plants.
Lee Sun-bin (Boyhood) plays Kim Mi-kyung, the lead agricultural researcher of the Sunnyeo Group’s Potato Lab. Mi-kyung is positively obsessed with potatoes, considered to be not only the key to Korea’s future prosperity but also humanity’s.
However, Mi-kyung’s starchy ambitions are sidelined at the outset of the series in the face of a more immediate concern. The Sunnyeo Group has been swallowed by the larger Wonhan Retail conglomerate. Hidden away in the countryside, the Potato Lab’s fate hangs in the balance.
Mi-kyung’s concerns are twofold, as the acquisition puts her on a collision course with her chequered past.
Unlike her caricatured country bumpkin colleagues, Mi-kyung comes from the South Korean capital, Seoul. She used to work at Wonhan and at the time was also in a relationship with Park Ki-se (Lee Hak-joo, Newtopia), currently the executive director of Wonhan’s strategic planning division.

When the Potato Lab team travel to Wonhan HQ to pick up their new company IDs, Mi-kyung has a very embarrassing reunion with Ki-se while crawling under a stile.
But she can put her ex out of her mind for the moment when she returns to the countryside. Less easy to wipe from her thoughts is the slick Wonhan executive So Baek-ho, played by Kang Tae-oh (Extraordinary Attorney Woo).
Baek-ho is the director of organisational innovation at Wonhan, a rather typical male lead with looks and smarts who is introduced as a corporate hero. He struts into a closed-door meeting to put a stop to a huckster who has seduced some high-level executives with a shady deal.

At Wonhan HQ, he is accosted by a disgruntled former employee who threatens to kill him. Baek-ho dissuades the man by making him realise how much more debt his family would fall into if he were to carry through with that plan. He also tackles him to the ground and disarms him for good measure.
Baek-ho next sets his sights on the Potato Lab, and begins to investigate whether it is a necessary company of Wonhan. He performs an on-site inspection and, after the Potato Lab’s director is let go, he steps into the position temporarily.
Since Baek-ho is positioned as an existential threat to the lab, Mi-kyung is immediately ill-disposed towards him. So begins a classic contentious K-drama romcom pairing.
Adding fuel to the fire is Baek-ho’s change of address – he happens to move into the guest house where Mi-kyung lives, which is run by her brother.
Given that this is a show about an agricultural laboratory, perhaps it is no surprise that The Potato Lab relies so strongly on formula. Clichés abound from the very first frame and the series is quite happy to luxuriate in familiarity.

While this is a predictable approach, shows like this live or die on the strength of their leads and their romantic chemistry.
It is a little too early to pass judgment on the romance of The Potato Lab, hardly even a seedling at this point, but the characters who will engage in it leave something to be desired.
Mi-kyung has all the tropes of a classic female lead, which is to say she is hard-working and hot-headed, but all that amounts to is working on 2,000 strains of the same potato and very angrily chewing her food and brushing her teeth.
Never rising above formula, the character is too thinly drawn; despite a valiantly physical effort, Lee is unable to solve the equation.

Baek-ho is even more stereotypical, but while Kang cuts a fine figure in a suit, his aloofness is stiff and brittle where it needs to be cocky and charming.
No doubt additional layers will fill in the characters of Mi-kyung and Baek-ho in the coming episodes to some degree, but there isn’t much cause for optimism so far.
After all, as important as reliable staple foods are, for a full meal you need more varied ingredients.
The Potato Lab is streaming on Netflix.


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Obsessive rural-based researcher meets city slicker in Netflix series in which we have yet to see much evidence of chemistry between them


Obsessive rural-based researcher meets city slicker in Netflix series in which we have yet to see much evidence of chemistry between them.


Netflix K-drama The Potato Lab: Lee Sun-bin, Kang Tae-oh headline formulaic rural romcom

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Obsessive rural-based researcher meets city slicker in Netflix series in which we have yet to see much evidence of chemistry between them

Obsessive rural-based researcher meets city slicker in Netflix series in which we have yet to see much evidence of chemistry between them