Fufu

Fufu (Sundays, 9 p.m., the TBS network) is the drama to watch this autumn. Hitomi Kuroki and Masakazu Tamura are giving stellar performances as a couple careening toward their 25th wedding anniversary. This near-brilliant dissection of a modern marriage done with a slightly comic touch should catch on with the public. It might even be the first non-Takuya Kimura drama in ages to reach ratings of 30 percent.

The plot is simple enough. Yamaguchi (Tamura), the president (and star) of a telemarketing company, is a familiar small-screen personality. His stay-at-home wife (Kuroki) has almost singlehandedly raised the couple's two children. The son wants to be a musician. The daughter has just surprised her father by announcing she is going to marry his chief assistant. Both parents think the young couple should wait awhile. It is the dialogue, not the plot, that sets this series kilometers above the competition. Yamaguchi is perfect study material for the speech patterns of the average fiftysomething Japanese male. It is almost as if scriptwriter Kazuhiko Yukawa has planted a listening device in an average Japanese home and just transcribed the tape. It is that real. Yamaguchi is smarmy in public, but when he comes home and throws his jacket on the couch, he reverts to a pampered, impatient, self-centered fellow who addresses his wife as "omae" and peppers his conversation with a lexicon of other condescending phrases that show him to be a definite product of the mid-Showa era. His harried wife copes by managing everything to perfection and exercising the nervous, compulsive cleaning habit she has developed over the years. Still, she harbors a wistful yearning for a more satisfying relationship. She is aware of all the cliches for spicing up a marriage, but when she tries a new hairstyle, Yamaguchi does not notice. Her casual comment about hair has him looking in a mirror to see if there is something wrong with his curls. Of course, it's not that he doesn't care for her. He just doesn't have a clue. In a really funny and telling bedroom scene, where Yamaguchi starts snoring as soon as he hits the sheets, his wife reflects on her situation. She has no money worries. She has two great kids. What is there not to be happy about? And yet...the stifling status quo is taking its toll.

Previews of Episode 2 indicate the young wedding planner their daughter has hired, who remarkably resembles Yamaguchi's college sweetheart, appears ready to rearrange the status quo. Four stars for Episode 1. Worth checking out for the language lesson alone.

STARRING: Tamura Masakazu, Kuroki Hitomi
THEME SONG:
NETWORK: TBS
DURATION: October 2004 through December 2004
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