Park Ki-woong (Monster) is looking at a new drama, which makes me very happy, even though I’m acutely aware that I’m happy every single time Park Ki-woong announces a new project, and sometimes that happiness is rewarded, and sometimes it’s met with pain. He can be so freaking good when he’s on (Gaksital, War of the Arrows), but then he’ll go and do Full House 2. Or Seoul Murim Story. Or Monster. (I watched thirty freaking episodes of Monster for him before I had to tap out. He was good in it, but it was not good.)
Anyway. The new project. It’s the SBS drama titled Return, which cast Go Hyun-jung (Dear My Friends) early on to play a lawyer from humble beginnings who takes on the defense of a suspect in a murder case dubbed the “High Society Murder Scandal.” The case comes to her at the request of the suspect’s wife, a lawyer herself who attended law school with Go Hyun-jung, though she put aside her career for marriage. Film actress Jung Eun-chae (The King, Dr. Frost) has been cast to play the wife, and the two women will work together in uncovering the mystery.
Park Ki-woong has been offered the the role of a chaebol heir and executive at a large conglomerate, described as “99.9% golden spoon,” having no siblings with whom to fight over the metaphorical throne. Well, it doesn’t tell us whether he’s good or evil, but I’m really hoping he’s evil (and with the chaebol and high-society-murder setup, it’s a likely scenario), because he does so well with twisted characters, even if it would be typecasting him as such at this point.
The cast also includes a CEO villain played by Shin Sung-rok (Man Who Dies to Live), which certainly plays to his strengths, and a loose-cannon detective who, in the course of investigating a drug-production operation, stumbles across a murder case involving high-society heirs. The drama 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.
Return is set to premiere next January on SBS, in the Wednesday-Thursday timeslot following Nothing to Lose, which follows the currently airing While You Were Sleeping.