Quartet

A young woman counts her tips after busking with her cello in a busy Tokyo square and is approached by an elderly lady who offers her ¥10000 to get to know the woman with a violin in a photograph that she holds up. The woman in the photograph waits in the pouring rain for a minibus that collects her and takes her to a villa in the resort town of Karuizawa. On the way the driver, who is also revealed to be a musician, stops to collect a young man standing by the roadside and, at the villa, the cellist is found sleeping under a table.

This somewhat unconventional introduction to the four characters who form the string quartet alluded to in the title of the series, is a harbinger of the quirky dialogue and convoluted plot that is to follow in this unusual comedy of manners in which very little is what it initially seems.

Quartet is actually a brilliant study of how four disparate characters with a common purpose, i.e. to become a successful string quartet, learn to overcome their differences and reveal their secrets to become a harmonious and emotionally interdependent little group. So much so that it begins to seem that life as an albeit celibate group of four seems to trounce hands down the dull conventionality of being in a couple.

Unexpected events do their best to unsettle the group's composure and one serious revelation from the past leads to one of the group running away to deepest Tokyo, only for the other three to track them down, rally round and bring them back to the villa (a bequest from the grandfather of the second violinist, who keeps hold of it despite pressure from the rest of his family to sell).

As with a lot of J-drama, this show avoids the glossy, over-produced quality of equivalent western productions, lending it an easy spontaneity. I don't know if the actors were selected for their familiarity with stringed instruments but they are entirely convincing in their miming. Another pleasure is the witty, philosophical and sometimes absurdist conversations around the dinner table which occur on a regular basis.

'Quartet' is an intelligent and insightful comedy of manners, very different in character from (e.g.) Sakamoto's intense and melancholic 'Still, Life Goes On' and entertaining enough to engender withdrawal symptoms in this viewer after reaching the end.

This is currently the top of my list of recommendations for those who enjoy quirky, slice-of-life drama and would like to experience the best of what Japanese TV currently has to offer in that regard.