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Pierce Conran

This article contains minor spoilers.
2.5/5 stars
Lead cast: Go Youn-jung, Jung Joon-won, Shin Si-ah, Kang You-seok, Han Ye-ji
Latest Nielsen rating: 8.14 per cent
From a narrative standpoint, if Resident Playbook was about anything, it’s how one young woman picked herself up by her bootstraps, went back to work, and made it through the first year of her medical residency.
However, her struggles were not the point of the story.


Much like Hospital Playlist, the hugely successful medical drama of which this is a spin-off, the show aims to provide a comforting picture of the medical institutions that all of us will find ourselves in at the darkest points of our lives.
It is particularly interested in the stethoscope-wearing professionals shuffling through these halls.
The lead characters of Hospital Playlist were all highly competent doctors, but Resident Playbook focuses instead on rookie residents who need to learn how to become those doctors – mistakes will be made.
At the start of the show you would not trust these fresh-faced medical school graduates with safety scissors, let alone a scalpel, but by the time they reach New Year’s Day and move into the second-year residents’ break room, they have earned enough grudging respect from their patients and professors to make us believe that the kids are going to be all right.
The flustered Oh Yi-young (Go Youn-Jung, Moving), initially quit her position as a resident at the Jongro Yulje Medical Centre, but she returns to put herself through the ordeal one more time. This choice has less to do with career aspirations and medical altruism than it has to do with financial necessity – at least at first.

Yi-young frequently claims to be on the verge of quitting, thanks to the job’s brutal workload and her perceived unfair treatment from her superiors, but there’s really only one point early on when we feel that she might make good on that threat.
In one of many Hospital Playlist cameos – all the leads appear at some point or other – Choo Min-ha (Ahn Eun-jin) senses her hesitation and gives her a pep talk.
After that, the hooks are in. The work remains hard but she has become used to it and she has also begun to find a sense of purpose.
More importantly, she has found love in the arms of fourth-year resident Ku Do-won (Jung Joon-won, Believer), her colleague, flatmate and, somewhat bizarrely, brother to her brother-in-law.

Late in the story, Yi-young discovers that one of her old lotto tickets won a big jackpot. Now that she has the money to clear her debt, she can quit her job once and for all. But by this point we know there is no chance of this happening, so when she is shocked to discover that she is too late to claim her prize, we could not be any less surprised.
Also coming as little surprise is Yi-young’s romance, which is telegraphed early on and fits the formula established by its parent series.
In fact, romance is in the air for all of the first-year residents by the time the credits roll on the finale, and in each case it is a workplace romance, also mirroring Hospital Playlist.
Since this is a K-drama and the protagonists do not really have the chance to interact with other characters on screen, the abundance of workplace romances is perhaps unavoidable, but that does not mitigate the fact that it is one of the weaker aspects of the series.

This is especially true of the borderline nonsensical relationship that develops between bespectacled bookworm Kim Sa-bi (newcomer Han Ye-ji) and former K-pop idol Um Jae-il (Kang You-seok, When Life Gives You Tangerines).
During a late-night karaoke session – the only nod to Hospital Playlist’s musical roots – Jae-il finally breaks out one of his old band’s songs and wows his fellow residents with a carefully choreographed dance routine.
Everyone is shocked when Sa-bi joins in, revealing in the process how she has been hiding the fact that she was a huge fan of his idol group all this time.
Naturally he begins to look at her differently after finally being recognised by one of his colleagues and it does not take long for things to develop from there.
As a medical drama, Resident Playbook was often disappointing as it deliberately sought to offer relatively low stakes. The purpose here isn’t to revel in medical derring-do, but instead to show that doctors are trustworthy professionals and that hospitals do not have to be scary places.

In that respect, perhaps the show succeeds. That does not mean it made for good television.
Resident Playbook is streaming on Netflix.


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Carrying on from Hospital Playlist but never living up to it, Resident Playbook is a low-stakes drama with very few surprises


Carrying on from Hospital Playlist but never living up to it, Resident Playbook is a low-stakes drama with very few surprises.


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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Carrying on from Hospital Playlist but never living up to it, Resident Playbook is a low-stakes drama with very few surprises

Carrying on from Hospital Playlist but never living up to it, Resident Playbook is a low-stakes drama with very few surprises