Song Hye-kyo and Gong Yoo Lead Noh Hee-kyung's Return After 4½ Years

Netflix will release the series Slowly and Intensely on December 11, the streamer announced on the 22nd, with Song Hye-kyo and Gong Yoo in the lead roles. It is the first new work in four years and six months from writer Noh Hee-kyung, whose credits are some of the most closely studied in Korean television drama.

Noh wrote Lie (1998), That Winter, the Wind Blows (2013), It's Okay, That's Love (2014) and Our Blues (2022), among others. Lee Yoon-jung directs. For years Noh's releases have drawn attention mainly on her name, and Netflix is leaning on that again here, pairing her with two of the best-known leads in the business.

A music-industry story from a rough era

The series is set in the Korean entertainment world of the 1960s through the 1980s, a period described as dominated by savagery and violence. It follows people who have nothing but dream of success and throw themselves into reaching it.

Song Hye-kyo plays Minja, who grows up poor and then enters the record business. Gong Yoo plays Dong-gu, her childhood friend, who stays by her side and runs alongside her toward that goal.

The rest of the cast

Kim Seol-hyun plays Minhee, a bold young woman who pursues success on her own terms. Minhee becomes entangled with Minja in a love-hate relationship. Cha Seung-won plays Seok Gil-yeo, described as the top composer of his day, a man who turns newcomers into stars.

Lee Ha-nee joins as Yangja and Na Moon-hee as Malsun, rounding out the story's other main threads.

What the poster shows

The poster released alongside the announcement centers on a turntable, with the characters' timelines laid out around it like a panorama. Minja and Dong-gu appear as children. Elsewhere the story moves through Dong-gu's work as a waiter and his rise to manager, Minhee singing on stage, and Seok Gil-yeo playing saxophone.

The turntable framing fits a series about the record industry, and the poster suggests a story told across decades rather than a single stretch of years.