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Pierce Conran

Lead cast: Koo Kyo-hwan, Go Yoon-jung, Oh Jung-se, Park Hae-joon
Latest Nielsen rating: 2.24 per cent
Park Hae-young, the celebrated scribe behind My Mister and My Liberation Notes, returns with her latest slice-of-life series, the film-industry-set We Are All Trying Here.
D.P. actor Koo Kyo-hwan, who recently headlined the big-screen romantic hit Once We Were Us, plays Hwang Dong-man, a passionate and eccentric filmmaker who excelled among his peers at university. Trouble is, that was 20 years ago, and while all his classmates have thrived, he has yet to make his feature directorial debut.


Dong-man still hangs out with those classmates – together they form “The Eight Club”, a tight-knit group well known in the film industry. But its members have steadily grown tired of Dong-man’s antics, particularly Park Gyeong-se (Oh Jung-se, It’s Okay to Not Be Okay).
Dong-man has never given Gyeong-se any respect as a filmmaker, and now, despite it being the eve of the premiere of his fifth film, a deeply insecure Gyeong-se has grown obsessed with Dong-man, even daydreaming about ways to kill him.
Meanwhile, Go Yoon-jung (Moving) is Byeon Eun-a, a producer at Choi Film nicknamed “The Axe” for her ferocious and perceptive script notes. Her talent quickly made her the protege of the company’s boss, Choi Dong-hyeon (Choi Won-young, Phantom Lawyer), but once filmmakers began bypassing him and going straight to her, Dong-hyeon turned on her.
Now she is stuck being Dong-hyeon’s punching bag and suffers from frequent stress-induced nosebleeds.

Dong-man struggles to make ends meet as a creative writing tutor while living in the humble flat of his grim poet brother Hwang Jin-man (Park Hae-joon, When Life Gives You Tangerines), who spends most of his time away, working in the countryside or drinking himself into a stupor.
Fuelled by the stress of his bleak home life and stalled career, Dong-man begins to exhibit unhinged public behaviour that eventually becomes too distracting.
Dong-hyeon – though not a member of The Eight Club – takes it upon himself to humiliate Dong-man and try to force him out of the industry. He enlists a reluctant Eun-a, getting her to tear apart Dong-man’s screenplay.
Things go from bad to worse when Dong-man is kicked out of The Eight Club by Gyeong-se’s fed-up producer wife Ko Hye-jin (Kang Mal-geum, Gyeongseong Creature). However, rather than extinguish Dong-man’s flame, these events kindle a renewed passion.

Dong-man’s new-found determination has a knock-on effect on others. He stands up to Dong-hyeon, inspiring Eun-a, and strikes fear into the heart of Gyeong-se, who, deep down, knows that if Dong-man ever were to make a film, he would surpass him.
Much like My Liberation Notes, We Are All Trying Here is a show about people wrestling with the disappointing directions their lives have taken, who embolden one another to fight back against a top-down society that weighs heavily on them.
Yet where the protagonists of Park Hae-young’s previous show were often quiet and contemplative, Dong-man is a fiery creation who has clung to the ledge of his dreams by screaming out and making himself heard, while devouring anything at hand to quell his insatiable hunger.
He never stops talking at gatherings for fear that if he ever did, he might cease to exist. He begins his days with early morning hikes, screaming out his name at the peak, a heart-rending plea that echoes down to the abodes below, including the home of his neighbour Eun-a.

But this show is not just about the Dong-mans and Eun-as of the world, the people who feel a sense of injustice: it is also about the Gyeong-ses and Dong-hyeons, the people who have made it, whose successes mask their own sense of worthlessness.
This sentiment is captured by the show’s title, and even more so by its Korean one, which translates as: Everyone Is Fighting Against Their Own Worthlessness.
The concept of the show is not all that different from other film-industry-set dramas – a recent subgenre that also includes Melo Movie, Our Movie and the forthcoming Dream to You. What sets it apart is Park’s uncanny knack for dialogue that rings true while both speaking to our deep-set anxieties and lifting us up in spite of them.
That was what “worship”, the rallying cry uttered by the mysterious Mr Gu (Son Suk-ku) to the diffident office worker Mi-jung (Kim Ji-won) in My Liberation Notes, was all about.

This time around, Park’s keyword seems to be “self-destruct”, the emotion mapped by Eun-a’s wrist monitor at her lowest ebb, which paradoxically ushers in a wave of calm, perhaps that which comes before the storm.
The sterling ensemble cast here does not hurt either, led by a magnetically eccentric Koo. The only downside here is how excruciating the weekly wait for new episodes is likely to be.
We Are All Trying Here is streaming on Netflix.


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Koo Kyo-hwan plays  eccentric filmmaker Hwang Dong-man in a still from the new Netflix K-drama We Are All Trying Here.

Go Yoon-jung as film producer Byeon Eun-a in a still from We Are All Trying Here.

Kang Mal-geum as film producer Ko Hye-jin in a still from We Are All Trying Here.

Oh Jung-se as filmmaker Park Gyeong-se in a still from We Are All Trying Here.

Park Hae-joon as poet Hwang Jin-man (left) and Koo Kyo-hwan as filmmaker Hwang Dong-man in a still from We Are All Trying Here.

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We Are All Trying Here stands out from other recent film-industry-set Korean dramas with its dialogue, energy and stellar performances


We Are All Trying Here stands out from other recent film-industry-set Korean dramas with its dialogue, energy and stellar performances.


Netflix K-drama We Are All Trying Here: Go Yoon-jung, Koo Kyo-hwan in film industry drama

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}We Are All Trying Here stands out from other recent film-industry-set Korean dramas with its dialogue, energy and stellar performances

We Are All Trying Here stands out from other recent film-industry-set Korean dramas with its dialogue, energy and stellar performances