Nothing is more frightening, as the narrator points out, than a ‘time-rich nosy person’. Exhibit A is Ahn Geo-ul (Gyeong Su-jin), who commits herself to social justice causes with terrifying tenacity. After temporarily renting a unit in the Baek-sae Apartment building, she discovers that a loud, hard to locate banging noise occurs from 4am every night, making the residents’ lives an insomniac hell – and so she determines to engage in her own disruption and to find the culprit of this acoustic assault, simultaneously eliminating her eccentric neighbours as suspects, and recruiting them to her cause. Focusing on a woman who is an unstoppable force for good, it is also a plea for community cohesion and solidarity.
Based on the internationally acclaimed Tudor murder mystery novels by C.J. Sansom, the four-part drama is set in 16th century England during the dissolution of the monasteries. The series will follow the story of Matthew Shardlake, a lawyer with an acute sense of justice and one of the few honest men in a world beset with scheming and plots. Shardlake works for Thomas Cromwell, the dangerous and all-powerful right-hand man to Henry VIII. Despite Shardlake’s unwavering loyalty to Cromwell and the Crown, his position in society is unfavored due to his appearance, as a person living with scoliosis during the Tudor period, suffering the indignity of being abused as a “crookback” wherever he turns. As he investigates the murder of one of Cromwell’s commissioners at a monastery in the remote town of Scarnsea, he is accompanied by Jack Barak, a cocky and good-looking character who may be Cromwell’s spy.