What a view | In Netflix K-drama comedy Hello, Me! underachiever Choi Kang-hee gets a second chance at life – but will she take it?
- Hello, Me! tells the story of the downtrodden Bahn Ha-ni, played by Choi, who one day meets her enthusiastic, passionate and optimistic 17-year-old former self
- With the help of the younger her, she hopes to heal wounds and fulfil her dreams, but it could be easier said than done
The world moves so fast these days. Which is terrific if you’re a South Korean teenager with a penchant for shiny new gadgets. But then, you wouldn’t want it to move so quickly that you suddenly found yourself catapulted 20 years into the future with no way of turning back the clock.
Bahn Ha-ni (Lee Re) is 17, with the dance moves and vocal skills to become a household name – and disapproving parents who would rather she aimed for a sensible career instead. Bahn Ha-ni (Choi Kang-hee) is also 37, a downtrodden, underachieving job-hopper who has lately found work as a large orange squid – an identity she assumes, within a padded costume, to advertise, in a supermarket, the latest snack sensation.
At which point we turn to the honking, unstoppable truck, either just in time, or just too late – that critical difference being the peg on which hangs the first series of comedy-drama Hello, Me! (Netflix, now streaming).
Ha-ni is facing oblivion on a rain-lashed motorway as a truck bears down; mysteriously, she is spared, but that leads not so much to joy at her unlikely salvation but to regret, for the older Ha-ni (the squid), that it didn’t all end there and then.
When the older Ha-ni is pitched into the same predicament on a similar road, and saved again, the laws of metaphysics are bent to the will of the scriptwriter and the two Ha-nis (or is it one?) meet – with distressing results – thanks to one of those archetypal Sliding Doors moments.