What a viewIn K-drama Love (ft. Marriage & Divorce), three women find themselves in tricky emotional territory
- Three seemingly successful marriages unravel for radio station colleagues, played by Lee Ga-ryeong, Park Joo-mi and Jeon Soo-kyeong
- As inter-family connections are revealed, who is up to what with whom (and has been in the past) comes bursting into the present
The creators of Love (ft. Marriage & Divorce) must have modelled their series on the actual vicissitudes of matrimonial harmony, strife and the associated miasma of misunderstandings: it plods along for a while with nothing much happening, until – wham! – everything suddenly falls apart and becomes much more intriguing as a result.
The 16-episode first series of this somewhat sardonically titled Korean domestic and workplace drama (Netflix, now streaming) is laced with genuine bile and bitterness that is surely derived from experience. Oh well: “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer” and all that.
Three female colleagues at a radio station, of varying ages and stages of married life, share insights, good and bad, into their relationships. For host and station star Boo Hye-ryoung (played by Lee Ga-ryeong), wed two years, life seems free of the merest wrinkle. Meanwhile, producer Sa Pi-young (Park Joo-mi) must contend with an estranged mother suddenly returning from the Philippines and threatening the dynamic of a family life so rapturous it risks giving viewers a cheese overdose. And then there’s writer Lee Si-eun (Jeon Soo-kyeong), whose husband astounds her by abruptly asking for a divorce after three decades together.
One has immediate problems while betrayals and blow-ups set traps for the other two in the matrimonial minefield. But the trio aren’t the only ones in tricky emotional territory. As a tangled web widens and inter-family connections are revealed, who is up to what with whom (and has been in the past) comes bursting into the present, with patriarchs, mothers-in-law, tycoons and interns all snared, at one time or another, in love’s clutches.
On the male side of the divide are the various husbands, including those portrayed by Sung Hoon, Lee Tae-gon and Jeon No-min, who may not be quite as spotless as their spouses start out believing they are. As one wife, mother and wannabe grandmother puts it: “Whether it be single or divorced men, all of them have dirty pasts.” Well that’s us told, then.
Genera+ion: the trials and tribulations of Gen Z
If watching Love (ft. Marriage & Divorce) has sent you down the rocky road of relationships (at least in TV-viewing terms), you might be in the mood for a sort of prequel to the whole romance thing – albeit one from the other side of the world and spawned by a vastly different culture.