An excellent K-thriller w/a contract marriage complicating a truly super chaebol-evil kidnapping, blackmail and murder mystery plot. Fans of the genre will rejoice. I loved it.

The heavy use of text and phone to move both plots along is a brilliant metaphor for the communication problems in the marriage. The tangle of deception and family secrets is a particularly vicious one with one or two good surprise reveals (its pre-produced!); the script keeps it tightly organized. We regular people are still capable of being enjoyably scared and surprised, unlike many jaded reviewers only too pleased to trot out their superior foresight.

Really excellent cinematography throughout, taking full advantage of the excellent settings. Huge empty chaebol apartments contrast with the pleasantly crowded work environments of the couple, and lots of the action takes place outside in an autumnal landscape. The opening scene is of course breathtakingly Bond-ish and I originally hated the contrast with the opening credits' sentimental design visuals and music, but as it turns out, sentimentality wins in the end in the show. The spy-flavor is merely a decorative surface. Although the ML at first looks like a dashing superhero, he turns out to be a much more interesting character, very very introverted and inhibited.

Yoo Yeon Seok, playing Baek Sa Eon, the scion of an important political family, is living a lie; he is a fake son. YYS is incredibly good; what I loved about his tragic yakusa turn in Mr.Sunshine and his sexy chaebol self-assurance in Warm and Cozy is eclipsed by this more mature work.

Chae Soo Bin, playing Hong Hee Joo, daughter of an important media family, is also living a lie; she is a fake mute. CSB's portrayal starts off as an impossibly isolated woman whose controlling and gaslighting relatives have forced her into mutism for over a decade. She communicates by written text and through sign language, and works as an interpreter.

She also believes that her marriage is a fraud and her obligatory 'silence' (by contract) about this subtly isolates her from the 3 lively groups of work colleagues who actually hold her in great affection. She, as it turns out, needs her husband's love to grow in confidence and to express her own needs. He is equally in needs of her affection to break the shell of his false life, so that her clinginess, timidity and weepiness are overshadowed by the ultimate closeness and equality of their emotional relationship.

Highly recommended unless you hate kdrama, in which case it will drive you nuts. On another note having the novel at hand is sometimes a problem -- the husband treats his wife very roughly, whereas in the series he is merely insanely cold. Sa Eon is not a tsundere type, though -- he is actually really scary and sort of threatening in a more classically literary sense -- more like the MLs in Jane Eyre and Rebecca.

ps. I am sure many waited to see if that daring phone sex was going to happen, but then this would have been a very different series!