It looks like the legal thriller trend will keep on truckin’ in 2018, and SBS’s Return will be the first of them to premiere in just over a week. The new drama about a high society murder scandal stars Go Hyun-jung (Dear My Friends) as a lawyer who’s hired to defend one of four main suspects in a murder case, and judging from the show’s teasers, every single one of them looks guilty. I could get behind a classic whodunit mystery, so I hope they don’t intend on telling us who the real killer is. So many dramas ruin their own punchline that way.
Go Hyun-jung stars as a defense attorney who comes from humble beginnings, and spent a portion of her career as a judge. But it’s through hosting a legal television show that she earns a reputation as a star attorney, and gets hired to defend the prime suspect in a high society murder case. Lee Jin-wook (Goodbye Mr. Black) plays a hotheaded police detective who comes at the case sideways, through a drug investigation that lands him in the middle of a complex murder trial.
The four main suspects are a group of wealthy friends who have known each other since childhood. Among them, chaebol heir Park Ki-woong (Monster) is the prime suspect, and his wife Jung Eun-chae (The King) is the one who hires Go Hyun-jung to defend her husband. The two women went to law school together and will work together to unravel the mystery. The other three friends (and suspects) will be played by Shin Sung-rok (Man Who Dies to Live), Bong Tae-kyu (Happiness for Sale), and Yoon Jong-hoon (The King Loves).
Each of the suspects is scrambling to cover something up in the teasers, though we don’t know which of those is murder. I mean, Shin Sung-rok’s face is covered in blood… but that’s got to be a red herring, right? Park Ki-woong is arrested, Lee Jin-wook bulldozes his way through an investigation, and all the while, Go Hyun-jung seems amused by the proceedings, casually asking whether or not her client killed a person like she’s asking what he wants for lunch. I hope for her sake that it’s a meaty character, but I’m sure she wouldn’t have signed on otherwise.
Return will be directed by PD Joo Dong-min of Take Care of Us, Captain and Birth Secret, and will be written by Choi Kyung-mi. It airs Wednesdays and Thursdays on SBS, beginning January 17.
