The first teaser and poster for Netflix’s upcoming webtoon adaptation of Kim Ra-ha’s Daily Dose of Sunshine is here, giving us a look at the psych ward nurse Park Bo-young (Doom at Your Service) as she learns the ropes of helping patients with mental disorders.
The story follows nurse Jung Da-eun (Park Bo-young), a former internal medicine nurse who gets transferred to the psychiatric ward of her hospital. It’s a different ball game from what she’s used to in her old unit, but thankfully she’s empathetic, earnest, and eager to roll up her sleeves and get to work. As she learns more about what mental disorders are like and what her patients need, she’ll do her best to brighten up everyone’s day — even those of her coworkers, like the head nurse Lee Jung-eun (Missing: The Other Side 2) and the burnt out proctology doctor Yeon Woo-jin (Thirty-Nine).
The teaser is an interesting mix of quirkiness and sincerity I can only describe as Wes Anderson meets The School Nurse Files. We follow Da-eun on her first day of work, where nurse Song Hyo-jin (Lee Jung-eun) lets her in on the first major difference of the psych ward: they don’t have curtains, so their morning starts earlier than everyone else. It’s meant to be a remark on how hard the work is, but there’s also the optimistic subtext that their ward gets to be the first to receive the sun each morning.
We see that duality play out as we get clips of Da-eun at work. While on some days she comes home and immediately passes out on the floor, on other days she finds it fulfilling, musing that, “It’s a shame that only good people seem to end up here.” We also get a glimpse of her goofing off with her best friend Song Yu-chan, played by Jang Dong-yoon (Oasis).
But midway through the teaser, we get a complete 180-degree tonal shift — complete with a giant CGI dragon — as the teaser shows what I assume are the internal portrayals of some patients’ mental battles. The hospital devolves into a raucous mess, with Da-eun doing her best to keep up with the frenzy, but admitting, “I’m not sure what to do to help these patients.”
Still, amidst the craziness, the words of Hyo-jin end the teaser on a hopeful note: “Even the darkest nights don’t last forever. The morning will always come.”
With the screenplay adapted by the writers of Behind Your Touch — Lee Nam-gyu, Kim Da-hee, and Oh Bo-hyun — and directed by Lee Jae-gyu (All of Us Are Dead), Daily Dose of Sunshine will premiere on November 3 on Netflix.