Two versions of one world, split apart on a single night and joined by a railway line: that is the ground Train stands on. This 2020 Korean series mixes police investigation with fantasy, sending a detective across realities in search of the truth behind a string of killings.
What is Train about?
Several skeletons turn up on the tracks of a railway station that has been closed. The discovery is grim enough on its own, but the case tips into the inexplicable when one of the supposed victims walks into the police station. Detective Do Won is left with questions that ordinary casework cannot answer: where the bodies came from, and who has been committing the murders. The trail leads back twelve years, to a killing on the night the world divided into two. In one reality a choice went one way; in the other it went differently, and everything afterwards followed. Do Won pursues the hidden truth into the parallel universe, where the consequences of that other choice are laid out in front of him.
About the cast
Yoon Shi Yoon heads the cast list, followed by Kyung Soo-jin and Shin So-yul. Cho Wan-ki, Cha Yup, Kim Dong-young and Lee Hang-na complete the credited ensemble. A story set across two worlds asks a good deal of its performers, because the contrast between those worlds has to register in people as much as in places.
Context & significance
Train is filed under fantasy, mystery and thriller, and it draws on all three. The mystery is a serial-murder investigation; the thriller comes from a detective chasing an unseen adversary; the fantasy is the device that lets one man move between two universes. Korean television has a well-established line of crime dramas that bend time or reality to raise the stakes of an investigation, and this series fits that company. Its central idea is simple to state and broad enough to sustain a whole season: two different choices produce two different worlds, and the differences between them become evidence. Episodes run about an hour each, giving the story space to set its two realities side by side. Among followers of the genre the series is well regarded.
Watching Train on Ktime
Train is part of the K-Time catalogue, a streaming service made for Persian-speaking viewers outside Iran. This page is free to read; to play the episodes, log in to your K-Time account. Menus, search and title pages are presented in Farsi, so the series is easy to find and browse.