What a view | 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.
