What a view | Designated Survivor: 60 Days – Korean remake of Kiefer Sutherland political thriller

Designated Survivor: 60 Days starts with a bang: the South Korean National Assembly explodes. Inside are the president and government, all set to ratify a peace treaty with North Korea. Outside – having just been fortuitously fired by that president, who didn’t like his telling the truth about diesel pollution – is ex-environment minister Park Mu-jin.

Park (Ji Jin-hee) is also an ex-science teacher, derided behind his back in true politicians’ style and wet behind his political ears. But with every senior government official lost in the rubble and Seoul sliding into panic, Park must steady the ship … as acting president.

If it sounds like you’ve sort of heard all this before then you probably have: this is the Korean remake of the American political thriller Designated Survivor, featuring Kiefer Sutherland. The 16-part first series is now showing on Netflix, with new episodes landing on Mondays and Tuesdays.

The pilot offering may turn stodgy as the suspects – North Korea, disgruntled environmentalists and the opposition party, who boycotted the ratification and conveniently dodged the disaster – are being lined up, but stick with it because events start to move quickly in part two. As warmongering uniforms yell across a “situation room” and fears of espionage take root, Park must establish his authority to prevent war.

Other familiar references abound. Before his career trajectory makes him the accidental point man, Park is Seoul’s knight in shining green armour, resisting American pressure to import smoky vehicles under cover of manipulated emissions standards. The perfect moment of inadvertent slapstick (and horrifyingly embarrassing disrespect) follows during trade talks, when Park delivers a message in a bottle. Actually, it’s a double-barrelled message in two plastic bottles that eloquently exposes exactly the type of filth the big, bad American car manufacturers, and their government apologists, are trying to foist on the gullible Korean people.

Soon after, Park steps into bigger shoes – on the heels of a clumsy, repeated visual metaphor of a borrowed pair fitting improperly and causing discomfort. Nevertheless, constitutionally he must stick around for 60 days until a national ballot can be organised – proving that it’s not only in real life that presidents can assume power without qualifications or having to win an election.