Song Kang's comeback drama Four Hands debuts at 3.4%, well below its predecessor's peak

tvN's Four Hands opened its first episode on August 29 with a national average rating of 3.4% and a peak of 4.6%, according to Nielsen Korea data. That debut placed it first among cable and general-programming channels in its time slot, and it also led in the 20-to-49 demographic that tvN treats as its primary target audience.

The comparison that will follow the show for some time is an uncomfortable one. Four Hands occupies the Saturday-Sunday slot that Creepy Romance, starring Park Eun-bin and Yang Se-jong, left in August. That series started at 3% and finished its run at 7.9%, a trajectory that sets a high bar for what the slot can do. At 3.4%, Four Hands is roughly on pace with where its predecessor began, but the ceiling it needs to reach is considerably higher.

What the first episode set up

The opening hour introduced two former rivals who have spent seven years living entirely different lives. Kang Bi-o (Song Kang) is a student pianist at Korea Arts High School, the son of an artistic family who has won international competitions and earned school commendations, yet tosses a certificate of merit into a bin without ceremony. The indifference is less arrogance than focus: everything he does is oriented toward earning the recognition of his grandfather, Kang Seung-woon (Jung Jin-young), a world-renowned conductor who has so far withheld it. Outside that relationship, classmates' hostility barely registers.

Choi Jeong-yo (Lee Joon-young) is the mirror image. He competed alongside Bi-o in a junior piano competition years earlier, the only person to hand Bi-o a second-place finish. Since then, his family's financial collapse has pushed music to the margins: after school he helps a loan shark collect his father's debts. When a school assignment brings him to a concert hall where Bi-o is performing, he slips into a practice room afterward and plays alone. The improvisation catches the attention of both Bi-o and Bi-o's childhood friend Hong Jae-in (Jang Gyu-ri), a violist who has been searching for an accompanist. She offers him a fee he cannot refuse.

The school's board chair Yoon Seon-ju (Seo Jae-hee) and prominent pianist Do Hyeon-su (Kim Ju-heon) also hear Jeong-yo play by chance and offer him a full scholarship transfer to Korea Arts High School, including dormitory housing. Jeong-yo initially declines, skeptical that piano can cover a living. When the loan sharks show up at his home, the dormitory offer becomes a practical solution. He transfers, lands in the same class as Bi-o, and the two recognize each other, though at first only Jeong-yo remembers. Bi-o's own memory surfaces when he watches Jeong-yo practice.

The context around the cast

Four Hands carries an unusual amount of backstory for a drama still in its first week. Song Kang completed his mandatory military service and was discharged in October last year, making this his first acting project since returning. Lee Joon-young, by contrast, enlisted in the army as an active-duty soldier shortly before the show began airing, which means this is the last work he filmed before enlisting. The timing has drawn attention to the show beyond its story.

The drama is written by Shin Yi-won and directed by Park Hyun-seok. Whether its ratings follow Creepy Romance's upward curve or settle at a more modest level will become clearer over the next two to three weeks, the window in which tvN's recent Saturday-Sunday dramas have typically established their ceiling.