Lead cast: Kim Hee-sun, Lee Hye-young, Kim Nam-hee, Yeonwoo
Latest Nielsen rating: 5.5 per cent
A wife and her nagging mother-in-law go head-to-head in the new mystery drama Bitter Sweet Hell. Or do they?
Kim Hee-sun (Tomorrow), who appeared in well-received theatrical romcom Honey Sweet in 2023, plays No Young-won, a popular psychologist who is also a television celebrity.
This family unit and its intense bond are at the heart of Bitter Sweet Hell. The Korean title, which translates as “Our House”, feels more narratively appropriate, while the English title evokes the atmosphere that suffuses the series.
Like many other mystery dramas, this one is light on plot and heavy on style during its early episodes.
It starts with Young-won dressed in a white fur coat, driving a car through the snowy mountains. A French song bleeds into the soundtrack and Sa-gang, lounging outside a villa in the mountains, sips on red wine while reading Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations.
While it is hard to imagine a narrative link between this story and Great Expectations, Dickens’ famous novel is all about class, redemption and wrongly assuming things about people. It all ends rather tragically for most of its characters. Is Sa-gang’s reading choice a foreboding hint about what is to come?
The show’s opening also teases our imagination with flashes of a family portrait burning in a fire and a car being hoisted out of a body of water, before placing us in the present, before everything has gone awry.
The first signs of trouble manifest at Young-won’s clinic, with the arrival of her new client Lee Se-na (Yeonwoo). Se-na talks about an intense love she has for a man with a family she believes to be wrong for him.
The way that Se-na talks to Young-won gives us the sense that the power balance is shifting between these two. Se-na seems to be hiding something, as though she is connected to Young-won somehow.
Soon after this, strange things begin to happen to Young-won, starting with a parcel she receives that contains the headless remains of a bird and a note that ominously reads “Is your family well?”
Compared to her daughter-in-law, Sa-gang seems less stable in her life. Her new novel is being ridiculed online and she has developed some strange habits at home, which include standing by her husband’s bed and staring at him while he sleeps.
Meanwhile, all is not quite right with Jae-jin, who outwardly is a perfect husband and father but appears to be having trouble at work. He frequently breaks down with the shakes in the operating room, where his colleagues have to take over.
He has been going regularly to mysterious conferences in the countryside which are starting to raise Young-won’s suspicions.
Beyond threatening mail, Young-won is also being forced to confront her traumatic past. Her father, a close friend of Go-myeon’s, was accused of sexual harassment when she was a teenager and then took his own life. New information comes to light that challenges her feelings for her late father, as well as her beloved father-in-law.
Things soon escalate beyond blackmail when someone in Young-won’s orbit dies and she starts to realise that the rest of her family is in danger as well. Despite their frosty relationship, Young-won and Sa-gang must team up to save their family.
The successful career woman with a picture-perfect family life that turns out to be a sham – we have seen this one before, and Bitter Sweet Life has not bucked the trend so far.
Plot-wise, there is not a huge amount going on in the first two episodes and what does happen is very familiar and a little hard to follow.
However, the show does have two things going for it: its seductive style and a strong pair of leads in Kim and Lee. The series is at its best when Young-won and Sa-gang are thrown together on screen, with the visuals giving their dramatic connection a stylish boost.
Whether there is enough to keep that connection exciting for 12 episodes remains to be seen.
Bitter Sweet Hell is streaming on Viu.