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Pierce Conran

Lead cast: Yoo Yeon-seok, Chae Soo-bin
Latest Nielsen rating: 4.7 per cent
Yoo Yeon-seok (Hospital Playlist) and Chae Soo-bin (The Fabulous) become locked in a bizarre battle of wills over the phone in the melodramatic and ludicrous thriller When the Phone Rings.
Based on Geon Eomul Nyeo’s web novel The Number You Have Dialed, which remains the Korean title of the series, the story concerns two people engaged in a fake marriage. In contrast to typical arranged marriages, their couple status also remains a secret to the outside world.


The husband is Baek Sa-eon (Yoo), who is descended from a family of politicians and currently serves as the extremely popular presidential spokesman. He is the youngest person to assume the post and his dashing looks and strong voice make him particularly effective in the role.
Chae plays the wife, Hong Hee-joo, who works as a sign-language interpreter for TV news and court cases. She has not spoken to her husband in three years, which is symptomatic of their very frosty relations, but this is in part because she is afflicted with selective mutism.
One evening, on her way home, Hee-joo loses control of her car, which locks her in and begins to drive itself. After almost crashing, she is stuck in the middle of the road. A man clad in black approaches her and lets himself into the vehicle.
Holding a knife to her neck, this deranged man calls Sa-eon claiming to have kidnapped his wife and saying he will kill her unless he receives a ransom. Busy with an international kidnapping case his office is handling, Sa-eon does not take the call seriously.

Hee-joo manages to get away and does not let on at home that anything happened. Soon, Sa-eon is called from the same number again, and this time he pays attention – the caller knows personal details about him that no one else could.
Sa-eon now believes the caller tried to kidnap his wife. What he does not know is that the person behind the muffled voice on the line is none other than his mute wife Hee-joo, who swiped the kidnapper’s phone after getting away.
A tense exchange unfolds between the pair, but who is the cat and who is the mouse?
Hee-joo is the one making demands, albeit rather unclear ones, but Sa-eon has experience as a top-level negotiator and is doing everything he can to throw off the caller and keep them on the line as long as possible to track their location during each of their calls.

Selective mutism is a clinically recognised anxiety disorder in which people capable of speech are unable to communicate verbally in certain situations. It generally affects young children who have recently begun school, and is extremely rare in adults.
Hee-joo’s selective mutism serves a narrative purpose here, as it undergirds the concept of a fake couple who cannot speak to each other but who become engaged in ferocious but anonymous conversations over the phone.
Hee-joo is able to speak with other people, such as her senile father, and given how she communicates verbally with Sa-eon and others, her selective mutism in the rest of the series is very hard to swallow.
Her condition will no doubt be tied to a traumatic episode in her past, which may be connected to her sister Hong In-a (Han Jae-yi), who was the woman Sa-eon was supposed to marry. While we have yet to see her, her voice does feature in the opening episodes.

Where When the Phone Rings stumbles is as an exercise in mystery. The lead characters, their marriage, the situations unfurling around them – the whole show is marked by an overload of obfuscation and a lack of substance.
The story lays the mystery on thick before we even know anything about Sa-eon and Hee-joo. What’s more, the little we do learn about them early on is designed to confound our expectations.
Having one untrustworthy lead can be exciting, but when all your protagonists share that trait, expecting the audience to care becomes a big ask.
Charisma might have counterbalanced the obfuscation to some degree, but that is another element that has largely been missing so far.

In its stead, we have a presidential election in the background involving Sa-eon’s father supposedly raising the stakes further, and the suggestion that the aloof Sa-eon may care more about Hee-joo than he lets on.
There’s plenty of time for When the Phone Rings to improve, but there are only so many times we will accept the call.
When the Phone Rings is streaming on Netflix.


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Yoo Yeon-seok as presidential spokesman Baek Sa-eon in a still from Netflix K-drama When the Phone Rings.

Chae Soo-bin as Hong Hee-joo in a still from When the Phone Rings.

Yoo Yeon-seok as Baek Sa-eon in a still from When the Phone Rings.

Yoo as Baek Sa-eon and Chae as Hong Hee-joo in a still from When the Phone Rings.

Yoo and Chae in a still from When the Phone Rings.

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Yoo Yeon-seok (left) and Chae Soo-bin in a still from When the Phone Rings.

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This story, which follows a selective mute (played by Chae Soo-bin) and her public speaker husband (Yoo Yeon-seok), lacks substance


This story, which follows a selective mute (played by Chae Soo-bin) and her public speaker husband (Yoo Yeon-seok), lacks substance.
