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Pierce Conran

Netflix premiered the first three episodes of its coming original drama Somebody at the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea.
This show is cruel and very unusual, but the most striking thing about it is that, three episodes in, it is still hard to get a handle on what the story is – let alone where it is going.
Somebody is the first drama series from veteran film director Jung Ji-woo, who is known for the thriller Happy End and the literary drama Eungyo, which introduced Little Women star Kim Go-eun to the world.
The series features Kang Hae-lim, in only her second screen role after a small part in Live On, and Hello, Me! lead Kim Young-kwang.


Kang plays Kim Sum, a young app programmer with Asperger’s syndrome, while Kim Young-kwang is Sung Yun-oh, an architect by day and a serial killer by night.
After working with some shady gangsters to tamper with slot machines, Sum is headhunted by the CEO of a tech company, Spectrum, after inventing an AI-powered chatbot called “Someone”.
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Sum then creates a matching app called “Somebody” for Spectrum, and it seems to function the same way as existing services like Tinder.
When deaths begin to be linked to the app, Sum and her colleagues identify a series of accounts that are connected to the same user, who lures his lonely matches by always saying exactly the right thing to them.
Sum, herself a lonely person, tracks the activity to Yun-oh and decides to meet him.
Though we cannot say for sure, Somebody seems to be a show about loneliness and alienation and how one terrible man preys on these emotions in young, vulnerable women.
Yun-oh’s innate ability to chat with strangers is very similar to Sum’s AI chat friend, Someone, but what this connection is supposed to mean is anybody’s guess.
Perhaps it simply means that none of us are as unique as we would like to think; a clever AI or a sociopath can both easily figure out how to push our buttons.

Speaking of buttons, the series attempts to hit several hot ones with its lead characters. Beyond Sum, who is on the spectrum, and sociopath Yun-oh, the show features police officer Yeong Gi-eun (Kim Soo-yeon), who uses a wheelchair, and a lesbian shaman, Im Mok-won (Kim Yong-ji).
Though the stories of these characters intersect, the narrative so often omits crucial pieces of information about them that you might wonder if you have accidentally started midway through the series.
Sum and Gi-eun used to be very close, but they had some kind of a falling out. We do not know what kind of connection they shared. They may have been best friends, but the conversation they share in the only flashback we get of them is very sexual, suggesting that they may also have been lovers.
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Female independence is another of the show’s major concerns. The main cast of Somebody features three female protagonists and one male predator, and the women all engage in sexually liberated behaviour.
They also knowingly put themselves in extremely precarious situations, often within Yun-oh’s orbit.
This suggests that director Jung and writer Han Ji-wan (The Ghost Detective) are interested in exploring Sigmund Freud’s life and death drives. Freud, the founding father of psychoanalysis, theorised that the combination of sexual instincts and self-destructive urges motivates most human behaviour.
There are some famous works of art that have explored these theories in captivating fashion, such as Japanese author Natsuo Kirino’s Out, but where that celebrated novel developed its story and characters before introducing those themes, Somebody jumps right in with them. This makes for a confusing and uncomfortable tone.

Adding to our discomfort is the show’s deliberate brutality. The chief instance of this is a lengthy and excruciating scene in the first episode involving a cat which is likely to be upsetting for many viewers.
But sometimes, the discomfort works to the show’s advantage. Thanks to Kim’s towering frame, Yun-oh is an extremely threatening presence. Whenever he goes on the hunt, the results are suspenseful and occasionally outright chilling.
There is a terrific horror scene involving a gigantic, rusted and abandoned grain silo, which is heightened by very clever sound design.
Part of the thrill is not knowing what is going to happen, as Yun-oh has no clear modus operandi. He likes to toy with his victims, but that does not always involve killing them. He may even suddenly set his sights on someone else around them.
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Somebody is a perplexing and difficult series, but at no point is it ever less than extremely interesting. The corners of the story are out of our reach, but the show’s fascinating ideas, and its aggressive and confident tone, provide their own kind of a hook.
For the brave viewers who do get reeled in, only time will tell if our patience will be rewarded when the full episodes become available next month.
Somebody will start streaming on Netflix on November 18.


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Kang Hae-lim (front) as Kim Sum and Kim Young-kwang as Sung Yun-oh in a still from Somebody, a darkly compelling Netflix K-drama that premiered at the Busan International Film Festival.

Kang Hae-lim as Kim Sum, a young app programmer with Asperger’s syndrome, in a still from Somebody.

Kim Young-kwang as Sung Yun-oh, an architect by day and a serial killer by night, in a still from Somebody.

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Uhm Ji-won (left) and Jang Gwang in a still from Little Women.

Park Ji-hu in a still from Little Women.

Nam Ji-hyun in a still from Little Women.

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Lee Seung-gi as former prosecutor Kim Jung-ho in a still from The Law Cafe. The show is a jarring mix of regressive K-drama tropes and sloppy screenwriting.

Lee Se-young as Yu-ri in a still from The Law Cafe.

Lee Seung-gi as Jung-ho in a still from The Law Cafe.

Lee Seung-gi (left) as Jung-ho and Lee Se-young as Yu-ri in a still from The Law Cafe.

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Sung Dong-il as Team Genie leader Kang Tae-sik in a still from If You Wish Upon Me.

Nam Kyung-joo as Gyeo-rye’s father, Yoon Ki-chun, in a still from If You Wish Upon Me.

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Ji Chang-wook as Yoon Gyeo-rye in a still from If You Wish Upon Me.

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Kim Myung-ji as young student Hong Nan-hee in a still from The Empire.

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Kim Sun-a as Han Hye-ryool in a still from The Empire.

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While the first three episodes of Netflix K-drama Somebody, which premiered at the Busan International Film Festival, are perplexing, the show has a dark appeal
Somebody’s fascinating ideas on loneliness, why people behave the way they do and its confident tone are compelling – and certain scenes are outright chilling



In the darkly compelling Netflix K-drama Somebody, which premiered at the Busan International Film Festival, a woman programmer discovers her app is being used by someone who may be a serial killer.
