Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Trolley’ On Netflix, Where A Politician’s Private Wife Learns Secrets After A Family Tragedy

We all have secrets, but some are better at keeping those secrets than others. In a new Korean drama, the wife of an up and coming politician has managed to stay out of the public eye because of all her secrets. But they’ll start spilling out after her family experiences tragedy.

TROLLEY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A woman is in a police station, and says “My daughter is missing.”

The Gist: Kim Hye-joo (Kim Hyun-joo) is looking for her 14-year-old daughter, Nam Yoon-seo (Choi Myung-bin). The police officers who are taking her information are trying to calm her down and tell her that Yoon-seo likely ran away and is safe.

Thirteen hours prior, we see Hye-joo working in her book restoration shop; a customer asks her about her family, and she demurs, and you can see that the issues she’s having with her Yoon-seo and 22-year-old stepson Ji-hoon. As we see her walking home from work, she stops and feeds a hungry girl at the noodle shop of her friend Hyun Yeo-jin (Seo Jeong-yeon), a close family friend who lives with Hye-joo, her husband, Nam Joong-do (Park Hee-soon) and Yoon-seo.

She doesn’t really talk much about what Joong-do does; in fact, he’s an up and coming member of the National Assembly. He tries to fight corruption wherever he can, takes personal calls from constituents, and has the same humble office that he did when he was first elected. However, he does have ambition, and tells party leader Woo Jin-seok (Kim Mi-kyung) that one day he’d like to run for president. When he first got into politics, he assured her that she could stay out of the spotlight most political spouses get dragged into, and until now he’s kept that promise.

Hye-joo also doesn’t talk much about her childhood, according to Yeo-jin; she had a rough upbringing and has decided to keep that part of her life private from even close friends like herself. Still, she thanks Yeo-jin for being there for her when she was pregnant with Yoon-seo.

After a busy day, including going to the funeral of the granddaughter of the owner of a shop she frequents, Joong-do comes home “early” (i.e. before midnight), but is called away again for a funeral for an influential businessman’s mother-in-law. That’s when she notices that Yoon-seo isn’t in her bed.

Frantic, she goes to the police, who treats this as a runaway case, but make it a full-blown missing persons case when they realize that Joong-do is an assemblyman. That’s when they find the body of someone related to Hye-joo and Joong-do, just not who either of them expected.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Trolley almost feels like it could be Scandal, but a whole lot more subdued.

Our Take: The idea behind Trolley is that, via this family tragedy, Hye-joo is going to be forced into a public spotlight she never wanted any part of, and she’ll find out things about her upbringing and likely Joong-do’s life prior to meeting her that will be shocking. In the meantime, this death threatens to permanently derail Joong-do’s political career.

Things get especially sticky when a young woman named Kim Soo-bin (Jung Soo-bin) shows up at Hye-joo’s house claiming to be pregnant with Ji-hoon’s child. That, combined with the fact that Ji-hoon, fresh out of jail on probation for an assault, is found with meth, that will likely bring everything Hye-joo didn’t want revealed out into the open.

It’s an interesting premise, if only because we see that, at least before the tragedy, Hye-joo and Joong-do’s relationship is solid, despite the long hours he puts in. The two of them have managed to build a successful relationship through mutual respect for each other’s ambitions and boundaries. Hye-joo didn’t want to be a political wife, and he’s kept that promise, to the point where no one who deals with her knows she’s the wife of an assemblyman. For his part, Joong-do doesn’t want to seem like he’s exerting any undue influence because of his job, which is part of why their pairing seems to work.

As the 16-episode first season goes on, we’ll see this seemingly well-matched couple tested at every turn, and that’s what is most interesting to us. How will Hye-joo handle having her family history, past and present, aired in public? How will Joong-do’s crumbling political fortunes affect their marriage? And how will they be able to effectively parent Yoon-seo, who is well into her teenage rebellion phase?

Good performances all around, but especially by Kim Hyun-joo as Hye-joo, kept us engaged for the show’s first hour. In the scene where her nosy customer asks her if she loves her daughter a little more than her son, all of the hesitation and other things rolling through her head could be seen as she uncomfortably finds the right words to say to this woman that she thinks is prying too much but doesn’t want to upset.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Hye-joo is shocked when the young woman at her door claims to be carrying Ji-hoon’s baby.

Sleeper Star: We liked Seo Jeong-yeon as Yeo-jin, who seems to help keep the family running and cohesive as a live-in friend, nanny, housekeeper and wherever else she can help.

Most Pilot-y Line: The exposition in this episode is awkward. First Yeo-jin explains Hye-joo’s reluctance to talk about her upbringing to some who works at the noodle restaurant. Then a bunch of Joong-do’s staffer sit there and explain why Hye-joo is a private person who refuses to help campaign for her husband.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Trolley has good performances and its first episode does a good job of setting up its story, one that definitely looks like it could sustain itself through a long first season and beyond.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.