What if winning the lottery didn’t mean you could walk away from the office?
That is the question at the heart of the new drama series, The Ordinary Jackpot, starring Lee Joon-hyuk, who has only recently emerged as a rom-com favourite.
Its premise is both simple and strangely poignant: A man wins a life-changing lottery jackpot, yet still turns up at work the next morning.
Lee plays Eun-tae, a weary office worker whose fortunes change overnight when he discovers he has won 1.3bil won (RM3.8mil), after taxes.
It is enough money to transform his life, but not quite enough, by his own calculation, to guarantee a carefree retirement for the rest of his days.
So Eun-tae does something that seems almost absurd in a culture where financial freedom is imagined as the ultimate escape from work: He keeps his job.
Rather than treating its lottery premise as a conventional fantasy of escape, the series uses Eun-tae’s newfound financial freedom to examine the realities of working life in contemporary Korea and reconsider what work, purpose and human connection mean when money is no longer such a concern.
Based on the eponymous web novel, The Ordinary Jackpot caught director Yoon Young-bin’s attention with its unusual premise.
The bigger challenge, he said, was adapting a fantastical story about a lottery winner in a way that felt grounded in everyday life.
“When I first read the novel, I wondered whether the story of an ordinary office worker winning the lottery could really resonate with all those who didn’t win,” Yoon said at a recent press conference.
“But I found it fascinating. I thought the protagonist would live this way even if he won the lottery.
“He seemed like someone whose life wouldn’t be shaken by either good fortune or misfortune.”
That idea became central to Yoon’s approach to the adaptation.
Rather than allowing the jackpot to turn Eun-tae’s life into a fantasy of instant escape, he wanted the consequences of his windfall to unfold within the familiar pressures and relationships of office life.
“When you go through life, you realise there aren’t really people who are simply evil and want to hurt others,” Yoon said.
“This isn’t a story where good and evil collide. It’s a story where one person’s version of good clashes with another person’s version of good.”
The series avoids the clear-cut heroes and villains so often found in workplace dramas, focusing instead on the grey areas of professional relationships, where competing interests can put people at odds even when everyone believes they are acting reasonably.
That approach also defines the series’ broader philosophy.
Yoon said The Ordinary Jackpot goes the opposite way of many other TV dramas.
“Personally, I think most dramas take something realistic and portray it in a fantastical way,” he said.
“We took something fantastical and told it in a realistic way. Although the title is The Ordinary Jackpot, it’s not really a story about winning the lottery. It’s a story about people and how they live.”
For actor Lee, that focus on working life offered a particularly personal connection. Lee said the character’s relationship with work reminded him of his own after nearly two decades in the industry.
“I think there are many ways in which I’m similar to Eun-tae. I’ve been working for nearly 20 years and have done around 50 projects,” Lee said.
“I’ve always been someone who works, and there were parts of Eun-tae’s dialogue that felt similar to my own life.”
Asked if a major lottery win would make him quit his job, Lee said the windfall would not necessarily change what he wants to do with his life.
“Even if I hit the jackpot or won the lottery, I’d keep doing what I love, which is acting.” – The Korea Herald/Asia News Network
The Ordinary Jackpot is available on HBO Max.
