TBS stays on top of current events with "Watashi wa Kusshinai" ("I Won't Yield"; Mon., 9 p.m.), a dramatization of last year's arrest and prosecution of health ministry official Atsuko Muraki, who was accused of approving the fraudulent use of postal discounts for the disabled. She was exonerated and one of the prosecutors in the case admitted to tampering with evidence.
Based on reporting by Shoko Egawa, the drama renames Muraki Akiko as Nakai (Misako Tanaka), a 30-year ministry veteran who is the wife of another bureaucrat and the mother of two children. She lives a "simple, happy life that is destroyed" by ambitious law enforcement officials. The development of the plot focuses on how she was interrogated and the prosecutors' now discredited methodologies.
In the new drama series "Bartender" (TV Asahi, Fri., 11:15 p.m.), a saloon is a "getaway" where patrons can relieve the stress of everyday existence and unburden themselves to the bartender, a profession that, in the person of super cocktail mixer Sasakura (Masaki Aiba), takes on an almost metaphysical meaning.
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