Hoshino Gen to star in new WOWOW drama "Plage" as a man with a criminal record

Hoshino Gen will be starring in the new WOWOW drama "Plage" which will be shown this summer in the Saturdays 10pm timeslot. The drama which consists of 5 episodes, is the first drama in 10 years featuring Hoshino in the leading role and based on the same-titled novel by Honda Tetsuya.

Hoshino will be playing the 32-year-old lead character Yoshimura Takao, a sales department salaryman at a travel agency who dabbles in stimulants out of fun which then leads to his arrest and dismissal by his company. To make things worse, the apartment where he lives at goes up in flames by accident. Having lost his job and place to live, Takao goes to live in the sharehouse Plage which takes in people with various backgrounds who are striving to regain their former lives or content to stay in a corner of society. Although Takao resolves to restart his life, he gets embroiled into the controversies and troubles involving the tenants there.

Hoshino commented that this must be the most useless person he has played in his career so far and he revealed that he found Takao to be the type of people he can't handle. However, from episode 3 onwards, Hoshino finally saw the charming points in Takao's character so he unwittingly found himself liking Takao by the end.

Filming began from 8 March.

Sources: Sanspo / Sponichi / Oricon / Eiga.com