TOKYO – Netflix is producing and shooting an original series set in Japan about a journalist who challenges authority, hoping to woo this nation that’s hooked on watching good old TV.
Good timing. The series’ heroine is based on a muckraking real-life reporter, Isoko Mochizuki, who has doggedly questioned a politician who has just become prime minister, Yoshihide Suga.
Suga took office this week after his boss, Shinzo Abe, resigned over health problems. The Netflix series called “The Journalist” is based on the story of Mochizuki, a reporter for the Tokyo Shimbun, who kept asking questions of Suga at his news conferences as chief government spokesman, despite being cut off, ignored or ridiculed.