In Netflix K-drama Private Lives, Girls Generation star Seohyun convinces as a grifter who gets conned
- Overarching the slick, ironically titled crime caper is the theme of modern life’s war on privacy
- Go Kyung-pyo, Kim Hyo-jin and Tae Won-seock also star as con artists of varying abilities
Seohyun is much more than just a pretty face in Private Lives (Netflix): she’s also a petulant, pouting con artist who learns the hard way that swindling the gullible is simple – right up to the moment you land in jail.
As Cha Joo-eun, schooled by unscrupulous parents to fleece her way through the ranks of Seoul’s moneyed classes, the Girls’ Generation pop princess is a convincing cheating chameleon: one moment she’s a school crossing guard, the next a chaebol heiress, the next a commercial aircrew member (not the show’s only nod to film Catch Me if You Can). She also plays the daughter to her father’s phoney preacher, which is where Joo-eun falls prey to a bigger shark and her “career” falls apart.
The Undoing: Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant and murder in the brownstones
For adventures among the genuinely well-heeled head for Manhattan and life in the brownstones, where even expensive taste and oodles of cash are no defence against accusations of brutish, bloody murder.
Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant star as a highly successful professional couple with a seemingly perfect marriage in The Undoing (HBO and HBO Go, new episodes on Mondays at 10am, repeated at 10pm), an unnerving, psychologically jarring whodunit that unmasks all manner of dirty high-society secrets.
A plummy accented Englishman in New York he may be, but Grant plays against type to manipulate audience sympathies, twisting the doubts and expectations of his nearest and dearest into a nasty knot of grubby revulsion and paranoia.
Donald Sutherland functions at times as a one-man, force of nature supporting cast, stealing scenes as an affluent patriarch whose smile is as warm as winter in Central Park and whose cuddly grandpa act struggles to conceal his fangs. The emotional vicissitudes of The Undoing throw more gut punches than a keg of bad beer, but that shouldn’t be a great surprise considering its creator: David E. Kelley, king of quality telly.
Halloween tricks and treats in The Haunting of Bly Manor
For a bone fide Halloween bloodcurdler drop in on Bly Manor, where things don’t just go bump in the night but constantly lurk in the shadows, scuttle fractionally out of sight and generally put the wind up unsuspecting domestic staff.
Inspired by celebrated horror story The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James, The Haunting of Bly Manor (Netflix, all episodes now available) throws American nanny Dani Clayton (Victoria Pedretti) on the mercies of the traditionally terrifying and ceaselessly foreboding country mansion – although, this being the 1980s, Dani’s wardrobe choices are frightening in their own right.
Few treats but lots of tricks are in store for the unwary in this follow-up to The Haunting of Hill House, with the real focus of the manor’s supersensory terrors proving to be the excessively polite but fundamentally malevolent siblings Miles and Flora, who delight in goading their targets towards madness. Not that the adults around the place are entirely rational, with at least one proving that Dracula isn’t alone in believing mirrors to be a bad idea.
