What a view | Netflix Korean comedy-drama Racket Boys celebrates sports, family relationships and the quirky charms of rural living
- A badminton coach and his family move to rural South Korea, and must adjust to village life, unpolluted air – and the possibility of bear attacks in Racket Boys
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Mr. Corman is an obliquely funny six-part series about a middle-aged teacher examining his long-abandoned dreams of being a rock star
The medals may have been presented and the Japanese courts handed back to the public, but in South Korea the thwack and swoosh of the shuttlecock still signifies serious competition.
So let play commence in oddball comedy-drama Racket Boys (Netflix, series one now complete), in which the inverted snobbery of grumpy, suspicious rural folk can’t disguise their warm-heartedness for long and the big, forthcoming sports event is known as the Haenam Sweet Potato Competition.
This is where Hyeon-jong must first earn his corn, because the middle-school team he is now training, while once feared and famed, is so short of players it hasn’t entered a tournament in years – and if it doesn’t improve quickly the school’s funding will be cut.
Hae-kang, who makes much of his devotion to baseball and apparent dislike of badminton, must come to his father’s rescue, which is a handy reminder that Racket Boys is really about team spirit, parent-children relationships – among the sometimes neglected villagers as much as these big-city transplants – and appreciation of the cultural conventions and quirky charms of people unlike oneself.