JTBC’s “Miss Night and Day” has unveiled an exciting new behind-the-scenes video! “Miss Night and Day” is a romantic comedy starring Apink’s Jeong Eun Ji as young job seeker Lee Mi Jin, who suddenly finds herself trapped in the body of a 50-year-old woman Lim Soon (Lee Jung Eun), and Choi Jin Hyuk as skilled prosecutor Gye Ji Woong, who becomes entangled with her. The drama is helmed by director Lee Hyeong Min of the hit series “I’m Sorry, I Love You” and “Strong Woman Do Bong Soon.”
The newly released footage captures the lively and cheerful atmosphere on set, filled with contagious laughter. One standout moment features Jeong Eun Ji and Choi Jin Hyuk filming a scene where Lee Mi Jin, in a drunken state, mistakenly ends up at Gye Ji Woong’s doorstep and collapses. Choi Jin Hyuk actively contributes ideas to make the scene more intriguing, and his humorous reaction upon discovering Jeong Eun Ji lying on the floor sparks laughter from the entire crew.
In another scene, Gye Ji Woong visits Mi Jin’s residence only to find Lim Soon and Do Ga Young (Kim Ah Young) but not Lee Mi Jin. During rehearsals, when Choi Jin Hyuk opens the door, Lee Jung Eun hurriedly wears a sunflower headgear to hide herself. This prompts Choi Jin Hyuk to burst into laughter, remarking to himself, “How could I possibly hold back?” The comical atmosphere escalates further as filming progresses, largely thanks to Lee Jung Eun’s nonchalant and natural acting performances.
The drama “Miss Night and Day” revolves around Lee Mi Jin, a desperate job seeker who has been trying to land decent employment for seven years. She lives with her working-class parents, and her mother’s patience has long worn thin. Owing to a snafu at her latest failed job interview, during which another woman called Lee Mi Jin was a successful applicant, her mother now believes that the search is finally over. Bereft, Mi Jin does not have the heart or courage to tell her the truth.
Now even more desperate, she turns to a man who promises her a good job for a fee. She forks over the cash, but the man gets up to leave. Fortunately for Mi Jin, prosecutor Gye Ji Woong, sitting at another table, overhears the exchange. He chases down and catches the man, but this does not solve Mi Jin’s latest problem, as the money, which she secretly took out of her mother’s savings, has already been transferred elsewhere.
Mi Jin’s guilt intensifies when she returns home to congratulatory gifts from her parents. That night, she bares her soul in the yard to a stray cat. When the cat jumps into one of her mother’s large clay pots, she hops in after it and loses consciousness. In the cold light of day, she wakes up in bed and begins her morning routine, which includes squeezing herself between her parents on the couch to watch television. There is only one problem – Mi Jin now looks like a middle-aged woman (played by Lee Jung Eun).
Confusion and shenanigans naturally ensue, but once the chaos settles, Mi Jin starts to learn the contours of her condition. During the daytime, her body transforms into this older-looking woman. The moment night falls, she returns to her normal self. It is a difficult reality to hide from the parents with whom she lives, but with no other recourse available to her, she finds a way.
She does discover one advantage of her condition, in that it allows her to enter a special program for older job seekers. After acing the interview, she gets a job at the prosecutor’s office in her town, working under the alias Lim Soon. Before long, Gye Ji Woong transfers to her town from Seoul, as he secretly tries to solve a series of disappearances, which happens to include that of Mi Jin’s long-lost aunt.
“Miss Night and Day” is in many ways a spin on “Miss Granny,” the fantasy comedy sensation from “Squid Game” director Hwang Dong Hyuk, which inspired a slew of international remakes. But where “Miss Granny,” which features an elderly woman magically returning to her youth in the present day, playfully blurs the lines between social divides, this show is obsessed with sticking to binaries.
The show constantly explores black-and-white divides, whether they are between night and day, young and old, right and wrong, or, in the case of workaholic Gye Ji Woong, Jekyll and Hyde, and frequently illustrates them through split-screen editing. This is a world which has no room for nuance. Day turns instantly to night, as we see when Lim Soon runs into a cafe. Once the police officer chasing her has arrived, darkness has fully descended on the city.
Admittedly, this is reflective of a society built upon rigid foundations that people find difficult to navigate. Since this is a 16-episode prime-time K-drama, the workplace body-transformation fantasy concept is paired with a few other common tropes to keep things moving along. The presence of the hunky Choi Jin Hyuk suggests some Cinderella-style romance may be on the cards, while the prosecutors’ office setting means good old-fashioned crime.
Sadly, “Miss Night and Day” goes for the most conventional kind of K-drama criminal there is: a serial killer. It may have been more fitting for the show to dive into fraud in a more comprehensive fashion, much like this year’s surprisingly effective South Korean crime film “Citizen of a Kind.” But, given the show’s broad strokes and stark binaries, perhaps that was too much to hope for.
“Miss Night and Day” airs every Saturday and Sunday at 10:30 p.m. KST.
Source: JTBC, Netflix
