This article contains spoilers. Walk down any street in South Korea and you’re bound to see three things: a cafe, a fried chicken shop and a realtor’s office. Sell Your Haunted House , a lightweight and endearing supernatural drama, gives us two of these in spades. The “Great Real Estate” business, run by Hong Ji-a (Jang Na-ra), may not resemble Korea’s ubiquitous real estate enterprises – for one thing, its doors only open at night – but it represents the persistently lingering uncertainty of a speculative market. Real estate creates a lot of anxiety in Korea and while the fears of Ji-a’s clients are ostensibly brought about by ghosts, the real terror is that these supernatural guests are affecting the market values of their properties. It’s difficult to overstate how much of a daily concern the housing market is in the country. Whether chatting with colleagues over lunch or if you happen to be eavesdropping on your neighbours’ conversations in a cafe, chances are someone will be talking about housing prices – though these days, stocks and cryptocurrency are just as likely to be on the menu. Ji-a’s job is a stressful one and her supernatural ability requires her to expend a lot of energy – this is where the fried chicken comes in. Occasionally, Ji-a and Oh In-bum (Jung Yong-hwa) will drop into a restaurant, but for the most part she indulges in heaped servings of the battered bird, as well as other delectable dishes, at home. Real estate and fried chicken, the stress and the stress reliever, the yin and yang of daily life in Korea. Ji-a’s professional and private lives encapsulate many facets of the contemporary Korean experience, and that’s what makes Sell Your Haunted House such an effective comfort food. Sell Your Haunted House: exorcism-themed K-drama comedy That said, another thing that the series has in common with comfort food is empty calories. Diverting as the show has been and as magnetic as its leads are, the central gimmick has got somewhat repetitive, as the lack of variety in Great Real Estate’s procession of clients is starting to show. Meanwhile, the converging backstories of Ji-a and In-bum, the arc that bridges the whole series, has been predictable and continues to reach for low-hanging fruit, as a shady redeveloper has steadily come into focus as the final villain. Most of the cases the team has tackled over the last few weeks have touched on some kind of social issue, many of them somehow connected to real estate. The Cheon-ha Building case, with its surprise second ghost submerged in the basement sauna, explored how an entrepreneurial pair of young woman revitalised a neighbourhood with their rooftop cafe. This raised property prices and other businesses in the area flourished, but greed reared its ugly head and their business was swiped from under them by their landlords. In the apartment complex case, in which a mother’s dead daughter is haunting people in the car park, we are shown a group of homeowners conspiring to raise their property values, going so far as to erect a fence to keep unwanted people from low-rent properties out. Six new Korean dramas to look out for in May 2021 Mirroring a very current issue, they also ban delivery trucks from entering the complex, forcing deliveries to be made on foot. A massive complex in a wealthy Seoul neighbourhood recently enacted the same rule, which led to an outpour of online outrage. In episode nine, a young woman tries to move out of her apartment but is haunted by the ghost of her upstairs neighbour, who was murdered. She fears the ghost, but her real terror manifests when she walks home alone at night, worried about a male stalker. Yet the best of the recent cases may have been the story of the elderly Yoo Young-soon (Lee Joo-sil), who wants to sell her home, which has been haunted by her father for decades. The touching tale deals with old age and Alzheimer’s, and the feeling of being a burden to your loved ones. Alongside and between these cases, we’ve steadily been filled in on Ji-a and In-bum’s backstory. It was pretty clear early on that In-bum was the boy in Ji-a’s flashbacks, and the show’s characters have steadily cottoned on to that, with Ji-a being the last one to figure it out – a revelation that briefly breaks up the band. We discover that In-bum’s uncle Oh Sung-sik (Kim Dae-gon) was an arsonist, but it soon becomes clear that he was coerced into confessing to a crime he didn’t commit by Do Hak-sung (Ahn Kil-gang), the head of Dohak Construction. For the last 20 years, Sung-sik has been a lingering spirit, perpetually stuck to Hak-sung’s side. Though it’s easy to see where the story goes from here, there’s no doubt that the eventual exorcisms of Sung-ik and Ji-a’s mother will make for a moving finale, while the upbraiding and uprooting of Hak-sung will surely be cathartic. Because sometimes the best thing about comfort food is knowing exactly what to expect. Sell Your Haunted House is streaming on Viu.