It has been many years since we’ve gotten past the technological hurdles of having one actor play two or more roles in a show or movie. There is no need for awkward split-screen scenes or body doubles anymore; digital tools have made inserting someone into a scene seamless. That technology has led to shows like Our Unwritten Seoul, with one actor playing two different roles but being so good that it feels like two different actors sharing scenes together.
Opening Shot: A home movie of twin girls in their bedroom. One is playing and the other is reading a book.
The Gist: Yu Mi-ji and Yu Mi-rae (both played by Park Bo-young as an adult, and Lee Jae-in as a teen) are identical twins, with Mi-rae being born first — Mi-ji claiming that she got the “leftover name” between the two their parents picked for them. Their mom worked so their father became their primary caregiver and best friend, but he died when they were young.
Mi-ji was always the stronger of the two, as Mi-rae was sick a lot. But they were as close as could be, and always stood in for each other to help them get past each other’s weak spots. When they were discovered, though, Mi-ji got her hair cut so people could tell them apart. From there, their personalities diverged.
Mi-rae was always the good student, almost destined to get a high-paying finance job. Mi-ji was a fast runner, and was about to get a full college scholarship in track when she had a devastating ankle injury.
Now 30, Mi-ji still lives with her mother Hyun Ok-hee (Jang Young-nam), and works contract jobs like being a janitor at the school where Ok-hee is a lunch lady and their neighbor Yeom Beon-hong (Kim Sun-young) is vice principal. She also works at a supermarket and does day labor gigs on farms. She’s mostly optimistic, though her aimlessness is starting to get to her. It’s really getting to Ok-hee, who thinks that her daughter is getting to old to wander through life.
The other issue is that Mi-ji is no longer close to Mi-rae, who moved to Seoul from her countryside hometown and has that finance job. However, she’s also depressed to the point of being despondent. Mi-ji no longer even wants to hear about her sister, who is supporting their mother and paying for their grandmother’s medical care.
When Mi-ji runs into Lee Ho-soo (Park Jin-young as an adult, Park Yoon-ho as a teen), Beon-hong’s son and a high-powered lawyer, she gets irritated when he asks about Mi-rae, whom he once dated. When they were teens, it was Mi-rae who told Mi-ji about Ho-soo’s disabilities, which he tried to hide while in school, but that knowledge eventually led to Mi-ji and Ho-soo becoming friends. It turns out the Ho-soo is really concerned about Mi-rae’s emotional health, and thinks that the only person she’ll open up to is Mi-ji.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The only other show we could find where identical twins swap lives is Echoes, but that show and Our Unwritten Seoul don’t have much in common beyond that.
Our Take: We didn’t mention that “swapping lives” part in the Gist section above because that section was already getting too long, and the first episode was a whopping 80 minutes long. But when Mi-ji finally sees Mi-rae in person for the first time in a long while, she comes to realize how depressed her twin sister really is, and proposes that they swap lives, just like they used to when they were kids.
It’s an interesting premise that actually has Park Bo-young playing four roles: Mi-ji and Mi-rae, but also the twins trying to inhabit each other’s lives. And while the first episode delves mainly into Mi-ji’s life, there are enough scenes where we see the depressed Mi-rae to know that Bo-young has the capacity to play both sisters’ distinct personalities. How do we know? Because we weren’t 100% sure that both sisters were being played by the same actor; Park’s mannerisms and facial expressions as each twin were so different that we had to double check that it was Park playing both of them.
So after the first episode, we’ll now be seeing the mostly-positive Mi-ji try to take on the sadder Mi-rae’s life and vice versa. Mi-ji will try to take on the workplace bullies that have made her sister’s life miserable, and Mi-rae will work on a strawberry farm run by Han Se-jin (Ryu Kyung-soo) and contend with her mother’s insistence that Mi-ji get her life in order.
In the middle of this is Ho-soo, who knows both twins very well. Will he be clued in on the switch, or will he figure it out down the line? And it seems that he’s being set up as a love interest, but which twin does he think he’s going to fall for?
Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: The twins do the same “pinky swear” they used to do as kids when they swapped places.
Sleeper Star: Park Jin-young’s character Lee Ho-soo is empathetic and knows how to read lips from 50 feet away! He’s like a superhero!
Most Pilot-y Line: After both sisters take a tumble out of the window of Mi-rae’s third-floor apartment — Mi-ji grabbed her sister after she slipped off, in her attempt to get hurt enough to not have to go to work — we see the two of them hooked up to IVs in an emergency room, but we’re not really sure what injuries they have.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Our Unwritten Seoul is a heartfelt story of twin sisters reconnecting by living each others’ lives, with a really fun dual performance by Park Boo-young at its core.
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.