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Review | K-drama review: One Ordinary Day – Kim Soo-hyun stars in Korean court and prison drama that is easily one of the year’s tightest shows
- The Korean adaptation of British legal drama series Criminal Justice and HBO’s The Night Of will go down as one of the tightest K-dramas this year
- One Ordinary Day is an evenly paced production full of quiet triumphs and crushing setbacks, and full of scene-stealing performances from the cast
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4/5 stars
One Ordinary Day, the Korean adaptation of British legal drama series Criminal Justice (which HBO remade in 2016 in the critically acclaimed The Night Of), will go down as one of the tightest K-dramas in what has been a year packed with stand-outs.
With only eight episodes, this Kim Soo-hyun-led drama – which is serving as the launch series of fledgling local service Coupang Play – falls in line with other big-budget streaming offerings from Apple TV+ and Netflix this year, such as Dr. Brain and Squid Game, all of which fall in the range of six to nine episodes.
Without any action set pieces, One Ordinary Day didn’t quite hit the sensory highs of some of those other series. Unlike them, though, it was an evenly paced production full of quiet triumphs and crushing setbacks, throbbing its way to a satisfying whole. Much like Kim’s washboard abs, which get an extended cameo during his character Hyun-soo’s prison intake scene, there was no flab on this lean machine.
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