In Netflix’s K-drama Trolley, starring Park Hee-soon and Kim Hyun-joo, a politician must choose between his career and family
- Park Hee-soon plays a Korean National Assembly member who is the victim of one scandal and dire circumstance atop another in Netflix’s dark Korean drama Trolley
- When the series gathers pace it becomes a four-star thriller that exposes the fragility of the social matrix and attacks the despicable practice of victim blaming
The life and times of the television politician: the grift that keeps on giving. Except that, in the case of Trolley (Netflix, series one now complete), the honourable elected representative in question is more sinned against than sinner, a victim of one scandal and dire circumstance atop another.
Park Hee-soon plays Korean National Assembly member Nam Joong-do, tipped for the top and with an election approaching, but now on and off the ropes of public opinion thanks to son Ji-hoon (Jung Taek-hyun), who has previously hampered his father’s career but has now pulled off his sabotage masterstroke.
Already an ex-con, he has been fished out dead from Seoul’s Han River with drugs in his pocket; the police believe he was a dealer. The possibility of blackmail against the politician’s family then arises with the sudden appearance of the taciturn Soo-bin (Jung Soo-bin), who claims to be pregnant by Ji-hoon.
A jilted lover from a separate but also newsworthy incident (of potential “digital shaming”) takes a dive off a balcony and more opprobrium is flung the politician’s way. But far worse is the scandal quietly brewing under his nose.
Wife Hye-joo (Kim Hyun-joo) is a book conservator who avoids stepping into her husband’s spotlight. This, we believe, is because she’s the quiet type. But – shock! – she may be lying as low as possible (for a politician’s spouse) because she’s trying to conceal a crime of her own from her teenage years.
When the truth begins to seep out, Hye-joo also starts to look like a potential blackmail target, for a former school friend, now nemesis, and her obnoxious, needy, greedy landowner mother. Which is where one of the series’ themes crystallises: the breakdown of the trust in each other that a loving couple once enjoyed.
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This brings us to the initially perplexing title, which refers to the ethical dilemma concerning an imagined runaway trolleybus. Its relevance here, signposted early in a throwaway comment, concerns whether Nam the assemblyman would put his career first, unlike Joong-do, who would protect his family.
Ponderous in its early stages, when Trolley gathers pace it becomes a four-star thriller that exposes the fragility of the social matrix and attacks the despicable practice of victim blaming. And if ever a politician deserved sympathy (however unlikely that might sound), it’s probably Nam Joong-do.
Martin Freeman plays a grizzled copper in BBC First’s The Responder
The Responder (BBC First) could be the British equivalent of an American State of the Union address. Some might say its setting, the self-proclaimed “people’s republic” of Liverpool, is appropriate.
Violent crime, drugs, illegal raves and more await Police Constable Chris Carson (a grizzled, regionally accented Martin Freeman), a frontline-response officer gallantly trying to save imperilled junkie Casey (Emily Fairn), in addition to his other duties.
But “Liverpool” could be shorthand for most British cities, such is the unstoppable rot. And given that British police forces are understaffed, overworked and underappreciated, it’s difficult to fault someone like Carson: a law-and-order “uniform” being flattened under immense pressure in the role of bulwark against societal collapse – and obliged to watch his own family life disintegrate.
In six harrowing episodes covering a series of night shifts, Freeman delivers a bravura performance in portraying a man so far past breaking point that we sympathise even when he crosses the line of illegality.
This is a fundamentally decent individual ruined by the shortcomings of a ragged, failing country (and his own mistakes), and one whose therapist, herself under strain, can’t remember his name.
Written by ex-police officer Tony Schumacher, The Responder achieves something else: it lances the risible myth of the lovable Scouse rogue.
