Who’s ready for Kim Hyun-joong’s comeback? (It’s okay to not be ready. I’m not sure I’ll ever be.)
Four years after his last series (period action melo Age of Feeling) and a couple years after he found himself mired in scandal over his personal life, Kim Hyun-joong is getting ready to unveil his latest project, When Time Stops. The fantasy romance drama is a 100 percent pre-produced cable series that’s a few weeks from its premiere on KBS W.
In the show, Kim Hyun-joong plays Moon Joon-woo, a man with the power to stop time who has somehow forgotten who he is — he doesn’t know how old he is, how he came to be in this situation, or where he came from. He doesn’t find it easy to connect with other people, and can only show his true self with an old friend played by Im Ha-ryong (Ms. Temper and Nam Jung-ki), who knows of the skills Joon-woo keeps secret from the rest of the world.
Joon-woo gradually comes to discover the meaning of life after meeting the character played by Ahn Ji-hyun (Time), the landlord of a three-story building who seems like a rich and privileged woman on the outside but is actually saddled with debt incurred by her father. She works multiple part-time jobs to get by and keeps a positive attitude throughout, which may just make her dramaland’s only rich Candy.
That may sound fairly prosaic, but it seems there will be a fairly significant fantasy element, with In Kyo-jin (Jugglers, Perfect Wife) playing a messenger of the gods whose role is to find people possessing superpowers and bring them to the gods. What he’ll do with them after that is anybody’s guess.
When Time Stops will air on cable station KBS W as a Wednesday-Thursday drama premiering on October 24.
