My Mister (2018) Review: Kindness as Rescue

Is My Mister worth watching?

Yes. My Mister is a masterpiece of quiet television, a patient and deeply humane drama about two worn-down people who help each other survive, and it belongs among the greatest Korean series ever made. Its power lies in restraint: writer Park Hae-young and director Kim Won-seok trust small gestures, silences and ordinary routines to carry enormous feeling. The only real caution is its pace and weight, since the first episodes are grim and slow, and viewers expecting conventional K-drama romance will not find it here.

What is My Mister about?

Park Dong-hoon is a structural engineer in his forties, decent to a fault and quietly exhausted by his job, his marriage and his responsibilities to two struggling older and younger brothers. Lee Ji-an is a young temporary worker at his company, hardened by poverty, crushing debt and the care of her elderly grandmother. When she is drawn into an office power struggle that puts her at odds with him, the two begin to learn more about each other than either expects.

My Mister is a South Korean series in Korean, written by Park Hae-young and directed by Kim Won-seok. The late Lee Sun-kyun plays Dong-hoon and IU plays Ji-an, with Park Ho-san and Song Sae-byeok as Dong-hoon’s brothers. This review covers the complete series: one season of 16 episodes, with a finished story.

A drama that rejects melodrama

Korean television is often associated with heightened emotion, and My Mister is a deliberate counterpoint. It moves at the rhythm of real fatigue: long commutes, late shifts, cheap meals, the grind of debts that never shrink. Kim Won-seok’s direction is unhurried, with muted colours, night-time streets and scenes that are allowed to breathe. Drama here is internal, registered in glances and pauses rather than confrontations.

What makes the central relationship radical is that it asks for nothing in return. The show pointedly avoids the romance its setup might suggest. Instead, it offers something harder to dramatise and more affecting: the idea that being genuinely seen and treated decently by another person can change the course of a life.

IU and Lee Sun-kyun at their finest

IU gives a performance of startling restraint. Ji-an is guarded and cold at first, someone who has learned to expect cruelty and survives by giving none of herself away. IU plays that armour without softening it, then lets the character thaw in tiny increments, a flicker of surprise here, a hesitant kindness there. It is the kind of performance that reframes an entire career.

Lee Sun-kyun is her match. His Dong-hoon is stooped, patient and increasingly burdened, a good man who has grown so used to absorbing hardship that he barely notices it anymore. He brings dry humour and deep sadness to the role, and the scenes the two share have a charged, careful intimacy that builds into something overwhelming.

The neighbourhood that becomes a family

Beyond its leads, My Mister finds poetry in the margins. Dong-hoon’s brothers, one a failed businessman and one a struggling film director, and their circle of friends gather at a neighbourhood bar that becomes the show’s emotional home. Park Ho-san and Song Sae-byeok bring comedy and ache to these men who have not lived the lives they hoped for, and their loyalty to each other grounds the series in community.

If there is a limitation, it is that the office intrigue can feel schematic next to the richness of the personal stories. A few corporate characters are drawn more thinly than the rest, and the power struggle occasionally exists mainly to push the leads together.

Who should watch My Mister?

This is essential for anyone who values character-driven drama and is willing to be patient. Sixteen long episodes, some of them very heavy, make it a series best watched steadily rather than binged in a rush. It deals with debt, poverty, violence, depression and grief, and early episodes include scenes of physical abuse, so it is not a light watch.

If it moves you, three good next steps:

• Move to Heaven, another Korean drama about ordinary lives and the dignity of kindness.
• When Life Gives You Tangerines, for a long, tender look at hardship and endurance across a lifetime.
• Reply 1988, a warmer ensemble drama about a neighbourhood that looks after its own.

The verdict

My Mister is a towering work of quiet television, a meditation on suffering, decency and the courage it takes to keep going. Its bleak opening and slow pace ask a lot of the viewer, but the reward is one of the most moving, humane dramas Korea or anywhere else has produced.

Rating: 5/5