There’s a new weekend family drama in the works over at KBS titled My Golden Life, and the lead roles have been offered to UEE (Night Light) and Park Shi-hoo (Neighborhood Hero). The upcoming weekender will center around a heroine who is given an opportunity to elevate her status, but falls further down the socioeconomic ladder and finds happiness despite her circumstances.
If she accepts, UEE would play the heroine, who lived a well-to-do life until her family became financially ruined when she was in high school. She’s now a temp worker in the marketing department of a large corporation, and is described as competitive, with a love of sports, and has a good sense of humor and a refreshing personality. The hero, potentially played by Park Shi-hoo, will naturally play the third-generation chaebol heir being groomed to take over the company our heroine works in. He doesn’t seem to be the regular old cold chaebol type though, and is called a gentleman with an aristocratic air.
I have to admit, this casting news has me feeling a little mixed, because I really like UEE and enjoyed her performances in Ojakkyo Brothers and Marriage Contract, so the news that she might return to another weekender is wholly positive. And then we have Park Shi-hoo. I’m actually quite surprised that KBS, largely considered the most conservative of the Big 3 broadcasters, is the station to potentially have Park Shi-hoo back in his first mainstream (as in, non-cable) role since his scandal, and in a weekend drama at that. On the one hand, the controversy that’s kept him from being active in the Korean entertainment scene is four years old now. On the other, it’ll be interesting to see whether the Korean public, and especially the segment of viewers that tune into wholesome, family-friendly weekend dramas, can get past his history.
Because otherwise, this project has success written all over it: Directing is PD Kim Hyung-suk, whose credits include You Who Rolled in Unexpectedly, and writing is So Hyun-kyung of My Daughter Seo-young and Twenty Again. I’m not a huge fan of weekend dramas usually, but I am rather enjoying Father Is Strange at the moment, so I might have to check this out for the director and writer duo alone.
KBS’s My Golden Life will follow Father Is Strange and premiere in August.