Known for Acting
An old house stands amongst newly built buildings, as if it has been left behind. Tamako, a popular fortune teller, has been living there alone with her son, Tadao, for years. Because he has intellectual disability and autism, their neighbors often complain about his unpredictable behaviors. One day, Tamako is informed that a room is available in a group home owned by a company that runs the community workshop Tadao works at. Residents there all have intellectual disability but are living together to be independent from their families. Tamako decides to let Tadao move into the group home, but the sudden change of environment confuses him.
Set towards the end of World War II, Kaede Itakura, who leads kindergartners, and Mitsue Nonomiya, who enjoys music, persuades the parents at the school to take their children out of Tokyo. They seek shelter at an abandoned temple in Saitama while Tokyo is bombed.
At the Hirata home, three generations of their family live together. A crisis ensues when one afternoon, housewife Fumie falls asleep and wakes up to find a thief has stolen her secret money she kept hidden in the refrigerator.
Several years after Shuzo settled his wife’s birthday-surprise divorce proposal (What a Wonderful Family, 40th), the Hirata family faces new problems. Ignoring his family’s worry that he is too old to drive, Shuzo takes his old schoolmate for a spin after carousing. Soon, a new disturbance arises for the Hirata family. Veteran director Yamada Yoji continues his comedy about the “perfect“ Japanese family turned upside down in chaos, laughters and understanding. This time, with an additional taste of death.
A husband and wife have been married for 50 years. For her birthday, the husband asks the wife what she wants for her birthday present. She replies that she wants a divorce. The wife's divorce announcement sends the entire family into chaos.
Following the death of the unmarried and childless Taki, Takeshi, a young relative of hers, discovers several pages of closely written lines in which the old lady has recorded her memories. This is how he learns the truth about her youth working as a housemaid and nanny for the Hirai family in a little house in Tokyo with a red gabled roof.
Yukiko Makabe works at the #3 Special Investigation Team of the Metropolitan Police Department. She has excellent negotiation skills. Yukiko then attempts to negotiate with a hijacker on a bus, but something unexpected happens and her mission fails. Yukiko takes full responsibility and takes a transfer to a special interrogation team "Kintori". Her boss is Katsutoshi Kajiyama and Yukiko has had a difficult working relationship with him in the past. Her other coworkers include Susumu Hishimoto, Zenjiro Nakata and Haruo Koishikawa.
An elderly couple journey to Tokyo to visit their grown children, only to find them preoccupied and self-involved.
Daimon Michiko is a 37-year-old freelance surgeon who is part of a questionable “doctor placement service” that has her wander from hospital to hospital. The harsh environment at the hospitals led many doctors to retire from their positions, forcing hospitals to make use of said program to fill the empty spots at least temporary. However, Michiko doesn’t look like a doctor at all with her flashy clothes and eccentric attitude. In the first episode she raises objections to a certain operation which is planned to be done by the head of a hospital who hasn’t performed an operation for a very long time. This causes Michiko to incur odium at the hospital, however, everyone becomes frozen when Michiko points out the outdated skills of the director. She also holds a scrupulous compliance when it comes to her working hours, never does any unnecessary chores that don’t require a medical license, and couldn’t care less about the power struggles within the hospitals. Nobody knows how she acquired such a top-level skill that allows her to claim exorbitant sums as reward, but her private life is an even greater mystery to everyone around her. Tanaka plays a rookie surgeon, Uchida an anesthetist, Kishibe the head of the placement service, and Ito the head of the surgical department of this institution.
