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Pierce Conran

3/5 stars
Lead cast: Choi Min-sik, Choi Hyun-wook
A disillusioned literature professor rediscovers his love for storytelling in the twisty mystery-thriller Notes from the Last Row, a K-drama adaptation of a Spanish play.
In this tale that playfully deconstructs the mechanics of storytelling, Korean screen icon Choi Min-sik (Exhuma) plays Heo Mun-oh, a professor at a prestigious university who still agonises over the poorly received debut novel he penned several decades earlier and has yet to follow up.
He takes out those frustrations on his mediocre students, whose work he continually lambasts, as well as on his long-suffering wife, Jo Hyeon-suk (Jin Kyung, Queenmaker).


Life lumbers on uneventfully until he is challenged by a new student sitting by the window in the last row, who dares to question him when he goes on the offensive against yet another student in class.
This is engineering student Lee Kang (Choi Hyun-wook, Twinkling Watermelon), and Mun-oh soon discovers that this mysterious young man has a well of creative talent backing up his confidence. He is riveted by an essay Kang submits and promptly offers to take him under his wing and tutor him privately.
Choi Min-sik played a comparable role in the 2022 film In Our Prime, starring as a gruff school janitor hiding a past as a brilliant mathematician who starts secretly tutoring a gifted young student.
In both cases, Choi’s characters see their dormant passions reignite after meeting young prodigies, but whereas his custodial mathematician was equally motivated by altruistic aims, Mun-oh is a more thin-skinned creation driven largely by self-interest.

The excitement Mun-oh feels during his meetings with Kang, which take place secretly at his house, has less to do with imparting narrative knowledge to a protege than it does with the thrill a reader feels when deeply immersed in a story.
Kang’s story, a chronicle of his current life, follows his Parasite-esque invasion of an affluent family’s home after he strikes up a friendship with the very classmate he saved from Mun-oh’s classroom upbraiding.
After helping his friend do well on a computer coding exam, Kang is invited to stay with the family. His sojourn under their roof coincides with a series of crises the family experiences as they keep dark secrets from one another, which Mun-oh encourages Kang to unearth.
The series delights in disabusing its protagonist of his high-minded pretensions about storytelling as he quickly evolves from erudite literature professor to obsessed fan, one prone to disappearing during dinner dates to greedily consume increasingly tawdry and melodramatic new instalments in the bathroom.

As Mun-oh loses himself in Kang’s story, the power dynamic not so subtly shifts between professor and student, with the young writer having increasing sway over his older mentor.
The show invites viewers to consider a key storytelling technique that Mun-oh seems too consumed to recall – the lure of an unreliable narrator.
Mun-oh is too wrapped up in the story he is reading to question how much of it is true. A good writer takes inspiration from their own life, but to turn that inspiration into a story requires a certain degree of fabrication, and Mun-oh does not stop to consider where the line between fact and fiction in Kang’s story lies.
Meanwhile, another character constantly reminds Mun-oh of his perceived professional failures: the superstar author Kim Su-hun (Huh Joon-ho), a close university friend who was unsparing in his criticism of Mun-oh’s debut novel, which Su-hun declined to share with his publisher as his own career was kicking off.
Adding further fuel to that jealousy is the fact that Su-hun wound up marrying Ahn Eun-joo (Kim Yun-jin, Lost), the classmate Mun-oh was secretly in love with and whom he has never really got over.

While it boasts a novel approach to storytelling, Notes from the Last Row undermines some of its narrative interrogation by overindulging in melodrama. The bigger problem, however, is that Mun-oh is a character prone to the kind of logical lapses that make following his unravelling a frustrating experience.
That said, as Mun-oh spirals, Choi Min-sik is granted some opportunities to channel the madness of his most famous character: Oldboy’s frazzle-haired, black-suited protagonist Oh Dae-su.
Notes from the Last Row works best as an exploration of the seductive power of fiction, yet given the soapy and occasionally slipshod narrative choices it engages in, it is debatable whether it ultimately captures that power for itself.
Notes from the Last Row is streaming on Netflix.


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Choi Min-sik (left) as literature professor Heo Mun-oh and Choi Hyun-wook as engineering student Lee Kang in a still from Notes from the Last Row. The new Korean drama is now streaming on Netflix. Photo: Yu Ara/Netflix

Choi Min-sik (right) as literature professor Heo Mun-oh and Jin Kyung as his long-suffering wife Jo Hyeon-suk in a still from Notes from the Last Row. Photo: Yu Ara/Netflix

Choi Hyun-wook as talented student Lee Kang in a still from Notes from the Last Row. Photo: Yu Ara/Netflix

Choi Min-sik (left) as literature professor Heo Mun-oh and Huh Joon-ho as superstar author Kim Su-hun in a still from Notes from the Last Row. Photo: Netflix

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Choi Min-sik and Choi Hyun-wook star in this exploration of the seductive power of fiction that occasionally overindulges in melodrama


Choi Min-sik and Choi Hyun-wook star in this exploration of the seductive power of fiction that occasionally overindulges in melodrama.


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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Choi Min-sik and Choi Hyun-wook star in this exploration of the seductive power of fiction that occasionally overindulges in melodrama

Choi Min-sik and Choi Hyun-wook star in this exploration of the seductive power of fiction that occasionally overindulges in melodrama