Tae Hang-ho

Tae Hang-ho came out of theatre in the late 2000s and has been a fixture of Korean television since the middle of the following decade, turning up in what feels like every third drama: It's Okay, That's Love, Legendary Witches, Pinocchio, All About My Mom, The Last Empress, Zombie Detective. The industry runs on a small bench of supporting actors, and he has been on it a long time.

His usefulness is a specific one. He is a big man with a soft face, which means a director can cast him as the muscle in a crime series on Monday and the harmless neighbour in a romantic comedy on Tuesday, and the audience believes both without adjusting. In Pipeline he is a digger called Big Shovel. In Taxi Driver he is Park Joo-chan. In The Last Empress his credit runs to four episodes, which is its own kind of career summary and no insult to him.

Zombie Detective is where the two registers finally met inside one part, a comic role that needs total physical commitment and a straight face at the same time. It is also the closest he has come to leading a series, and the strongest argument for giving him another.