What do you get when you cross a medical drama with a zombie flick? Something a lot like The End of the World, a show whose dark, twisted DNA owes more than a little to the horror genre. Speaking of dark, twisted DNA, the show revolves around a virus that not only kills its victims, but has the nasty side effect of making them want to kill others. This would be grim enough, but the show also goes a step further, suggesting that the virus is merely a particularly gruesome manifestation of the vindictive self-centeredness lurking in all of us. The infected folks do nasty things, but the uninfected folks are often worse, with the show trotting out an alarming line-up of cowardly bureaucrats, backstabbing academics, corrupt businessmen and murderous moms. There are a few “good” folks in the mix, but even their motives are frequently suspect as they try to sort out who should live or die.

All this makes for gripping viewing, in a train-wreck sort of way, but the unrelenting darkness made it hard for me to really engage with the characters or their world. Some of this may have been due to the unexpected cut in the show’s length, as plot was prioritized over character development, but much of it stemmed from its deep pessimism about human nature. Certainly there are plenty of examples of people behaving badly in times of crisis, but I’d like a drama to leave me with more than “most humans suck” as a final message. Because, really, do you want your audience rooting for the virus?

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In The Poetics, Aristotle noted that beginning dramatists tend to be adept at creating believable characters and moments, but often struggle to fit them into tightly constructed plots. City Hunter, oddly enough, suffers from exactly the opposite problem. The overall story structure is fairly sound, with a compelling through-line and decent pacing. Unfortunately, the devil is in the details. Individual scenes make little sense, with character motivations that shift on a whim depending on the screenwriter’s immediate needs. It doesn’t help that the characters themselves (and, in the case of the leads, the actors who play them) seem completely out of place in the world the script tosses them into. For the sake of the Republic of Korea, I hope that the HR department at the real Blue House is a better judge of competence than whoever assumed that Park Min Young would make a great secret service agent or that Lee Min Ho was an MIT-trained PhD. I’m willing to suspend disbelief to an extent, but when the character who’s supposed to be the show’s resident super genius resorts to dropping flowerpots on his beloved’s head in an attempt to incapacitate/flirt with her I’m out.

The sheer incompetence on the micro level is particularly frustrating because on the macro level the show is dealing with genuinely relevant and intriguing problems, ranging from age-old questions of justice vs. vengeance and vigilantism vs. the rule of law to more modern issues of affordable health care and access to education. It’s a show that could have worked, and worked really well. The narrative architecture is there, but perhaps they should have brought in a novice writer to do the decorating.

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This show completely didn’t work for me. I love Korean historical dramas and the X-Files is one of the few American TV shows I watched avidly when it was airing. Melding them should have yielded my perfect drama crack, and yet . . .

There were intriguing moments, especially in the episodes involving geomancy and other time- and place-specific mystical traditions, but as soon as the cheesy glowing space balls started flying around I began reaching for the remote. At forty-five minutes long, the stand-alone episodes felt too short to allow for much emotional engagement and the monster-of-the week plots weren’t especially original. The overall mythology was potentially intriguing, but the writers, perhaps angling for a second season, seemed hesitant to actually “reveal” anything, settling for atmospheric vagueness instead of genuine narrative payoffs. There was lots of artsy hand-held camera work and an effusive fog machine, but I never felt there was much substance behind all the smoke and shakiness. The truth may be out there, but you’ll have a hard time finding it in the oblique writing and the dimly lit, bouncing frames.

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Film and television rarely take teenagers seriously. They’re treated as naïve innocents or hormonally crazed lunatics or slotted into a handful of predictable stereotypes (the jock, the geek, the prom queen). What I appreciated most about the writer of White Christmas was her willingness to make her adolescent characters smart, complicated individuals. She captures the emotional intensity of the age without ever losing sight of the intellectual growth that accompanies it. These young people may not always act wisely but they don’t act thoughtlessly. She also captures youth’s unique combination of idealism and cruelty, that odd result of too much knowledge and too little experience. It is hard to judge the cost of anything until you have lived long enough to lose it.

While I found the characters compelling, the narrative structure was bumpy at times. The first several episodes felt taut, chilling and inevitable, but things got rougher in the second half, with builds that didn’t quite pan out and plot holes large enough to drive a killer truck through. Also, for all the inherent darkness of the premise, the writer seemed hesitant to poke around in its more controversial corners. There was a lot of odd sexual innuendo that never really went anywhere (unless we’re supposed to read popping champagne corks as metaphors for other types of explosions), and while I’m glad the show didn’t go the slasher film route, really raising the physical stakes instead of simply pretending to would have heightened the psychological stakes as well. Some of this may have been producer-imposed censorship given the age of most of the characters, but it felt a bit safe in the context of the story. Finally, the philosophical questions about the “making” of monsters seemed rather academic when exploring what one does when actually confronting a monster. Choosing to do evil in a vacuum is a very different thing from making morally problematic choices when someone is actively trying to destroy you.

Despite these issues though, the show remains a beautifully filmed, haunting piece that’s at its best when it’s exploring the hidden strengths and horrors of the adolescent mind. Its young cast brings varied skill levels to the table, but their schemes, betrayals, alliances and desires are fascinating to watch.

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Discussing tone in the context of a review is tricky. A show’s atmosphere is something so ephemeral it’s hard to even define, much less evaluate. That being said, The Return of Iljimae is most remarkable for its evocation of mood. A fantasia in a minor key, it weaves a bittersweet, melancholy spell, accented not so much by its characters’ tragedies as by their loneliness.

Intentionally structured like a storybook (complete with an initially over-intrusive narrator), the show jettisons many of k-drama’s structural clichés as it follows the growth of its protagonist from innocent young man to wiser hero. Jung Il Woo gives a lovely (in more ways than one) restrained performance full of moments of quiet sweetness and pathos. Jung Hye Young, as his mother, is also exceptional, radiating warmth and longing. There are plenty of fight scenes and large helpings of occasionally distracting slapstick comedy, but the show never loses its contemplative feel. The characters find fleeting moments of connection in sex, friendship, compassion, and sacrifice but the world’s injustices are always there, calling them away from comfort. The show suggests that heroism is not a natural gift, but something learned and struggled for and easily lost if the passion for justice tips over into hatred. There are occasional missteps, including a bizarre first episode, but once the show finds its rhythm, it becomes a hero’s journey very much worth the taking.

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Jumong was my gateway drama. Someone might as well have handed me 81 packets of heroin and said “Go for it!”. Epic in all the best ways, it steals shamelessly from adventure stories ranging from the Odyssey to The Three Kingdoms to Robin Hood, traversing decades of time and miles of gorgeous mountain scenery as it crams in battles, family strife, romance, betrayal and the occasional heavenly portent. It has a sweeping, old-school Hollywood feel, but with modern touches that include a smart, independent heroine and a trans/non-binary character who actually gets to have an adorable romantic relationship with the most unlikely of partners.

The plot lines may hardly be original, but the complexity of the main characters gives the old stories a freshness and power they would otherwise lack. Song Il Guk does a fine job as the young prince destined to found an empire, but my favorite actors (and characters) were Hu Joon Ho as the grizzled veteran Haemosu and Jun Kwang Ryul as the tormented king Kumwa. Hu exudes presence every moment he’s onscreen, and Jun’s portrayal of the king’s increasingly conflicted and destructive loyalties is devastating. The show also uses its length to draw us so completely into its web of relationships that many of its most powerful scenes are not the giant battles but the quiet moments where a truth is revealed or a lie is told or a heart is broken.

Does everything work? No. The plot meanders in the final third, with wild goose chases down narrative lines that seem designed to kill time rather than actually deliver meaningful revelations. I could have lived without the saccharine pop ballad love songs on endless repeat and you could get rip-roaring drunk in no time if you took a shot whenever someone stages an ambush, falls off a cliff, discusses an evil plan around an ornate wooden table or survives getting shot by multiple arrows. However, if you’re looking for ridiculously immersive popular entertainment and don’t mind sleep deprivation, you’re in for a hell of a ride. Just be careful – this whole drama thing can get addictive . . . .

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I started Sungkyunkwan Scandal expecting fluff and eye candy. The pretty cast and brightly colored posters suggested college hijinks with hanboks, and there was indeed plenty of cute, anachronistic fun. What I didn’t expect was solid writing that would use the not so light and fluffy realities of the show’s historical era to poke a sharp stick at Neo-Confucianist ideas about gender, class, sexual orientation and filial piety. The four central characters are given multidimensional, compelling relationships, and while I wish the two leads were played by more dynamic actors, Yoo Ah In and Song Joong Ki are marvelous. The show recognizes that while college in any time period may contain lots of frivolity, petty rivalries, romance, and odd initiation rites, it is most crucially the place where young idealists take aim at the cynicism and corruption of their elders.

Unfortunately though, while the show is willing to raise provocative issues, it’s unwilling to really deal with the ramifications of those issues. A world where being an educated woman or a gay man is a capital crime is hardly likely to provide a happy ending for nonconformists. Instead of confronting this head-on, the drama drifts into fantasy in its final episodes, substituting feel-good platitudes and miraculous solutions for the difficult problems it has so compellingly presented. This allows it to maintain its romantic comedy credentials, but at the cost of what could have been a much darker, but also much more honest show.

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I usually approach shows about artists with trepidation. Even if the artist’s work is extraordinary, the act of creating art – of painting a picture or writing a novel – is rarely dramatically compelling. It can literally be as fun as watching paint dry. It is a testament to the skills of the director and writer of this show that they make the artistic process revelatory and exciting. Partly this is accomplished through gorgeous visual storytelling, as paintings literally come to life, revealing the secrets of their composition. More critically though, Painter of the Wind looks at why art matters – how it can reinforce or challenge power, how it can scandalize and seduce, how it can not only capture the world but remake it in a different image.

However, while this is obviously a show about art, it is equally a show about sex. It uses its cross-dressing premise as a starting point to pose provocative questions about gender and sexuality, and unlike many other shows, it consistently refuses to default to safe, easy choices. It suggests that there is more than one way to read a painting or a relationship, and that societally sanctioned views that champion heterosexual male privilege will miss a great deal of meaning. Like Shin Yun Bok’s paintings, this is a daring, sexy show that is quite happy to reveal more about its world than its inhabitants may want to see.

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In a beauty pageant, Emperor of the Sea would win hands-down. From sweeping vistas of windy cliffs to carefully composed interiors to torch-lit ships fanning out across the darkened sea, it is one of the most beautifully filmed k-dramas that I’ve watched. It also features an intriguing central triangle anchored by a break-through performance by a dynamic, dangerous Song Il-Guk. Unfortunately, the directing, acting and cinematography can’t make up for the weaknesses in the writing. As long as the screenwriters are dealing with the characters’ early lives where few historical facts are available, things clip along fairly well. The writing is solid if not exceptional, and the show’s other strengths outweigh the script’s drawbacks. However, once the characters collide with reasonably well documented historical facts in the final third of the show, things start to go awry. Character motivations change inexplicably and the narrative becomes confused and repetitive. The writers seem unable to fit the characters they’ve created to the actions that, at least according to extant sources, they actually commit. Lots of stuff, much of it bad, happens, but it often feels arbitrary, robbing the climatic scenes of the feeling of inevitability needed for maximum dramatic impact. It’s as if you’ve spent 50 hours with a set of characters only to watch them get randomly flattened by a meteor at the end. It may be spectacular but it’s not especially satisfying.

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This show goes to eleven.

Always. It’s like being trapped in a room with a blind boxer. Windows get broken, messes get made, lots of punches go awry. Between the shouting and the pistol-waving and the torture and the explosions you may want to slip the show a few Valiums and tell it to chill. But then a punch lands, and damn . . .

Is the show often over-the-top? Repetitive? Uneven? Infuriating? Yes. All of the above. But its no-holds-barred approach is also its greatest strength. The show takes big risks, and while not all of them pay off, its willingness to push the boundaries of content and plot conventions makes it gripping and unpredictable. It’s rarely subtle, but when it works it’s powerful. Much of this power comes from the raw energy of its male leads, and their explosive chemistry as they love and hate and destroy each other and those around them. The female lead is weak but it doesn’t really matter. This show is all about the boys.

Is there a lot of sturm und drang? Yes. Is all of it necessary? Maybe not, but the best moments will haunt you long after the screaming stops.

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Who knew that road construction could make for compelling drama? Or boilers? Or building permits? It is a testament to the skill of the Giant production team that they are able to turn such seemingly mundane matters into taut, dynamic story arcs. While Giant draws on plenty of tricks from the melodrama playbook, it’s distinguished by its complex characters, sharp writing and an extraordinary ensemble cast.

The writing is a bit sketchy in the initial episodes, with extra servings of trauma and some odd lapses in logic. However, the child actors are terrific (why hello, future stars!), and they morph into equally terrific adult actors. The male characters are particularly nuanced, as we watch two generations struggle to drag themselves and their country out of dire poverty. It isn’t always pretty, and I appreciated the show’s willingness to give all of its characters dark edges, especially since it’s equally willing to give them all moments of insight and grace. The female characters initially tend towards angelic but dim or shrewish and evil, but they also become more complex as the show progresses.

Keeping a 60 episode show engaging is no easy task, and Giant does it with sophistication, style and humanity. It has plenty of “big” moments, but it never forgets that even the most ordinary activities can be dramatic. It finds poetry in mud flats and rock piles, and in the rough-edged men fighting to build a nation from them at any cost.

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What happens when four characters are all seeking the same positive goal and yet are coming at it from such different angles that they’re likely to end up destroying each other in their attempts to achieve it? This is the fascinating, risky premise of Conspiracy in the Court. In a mere eight episodes, it manages to deftly sketch out a complex political situation where would-be allies find themselves constantly opposing each other as the real forces of darkness use the disorder to consolidate their power. For the first seven episodes it makes for a sophisticated, compelling show. And then episode eight comes along. Without throwing in specific spoilers, I found it hard to take much away from a show that essentially ended with the message that if you try to fight the power, the power will win. It may be “realistic”, and given the historical context, it wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it felt like a cop-out for a show that had presented so many smart, idealistic characters trying so many different approaches to address the evils of the world.

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Is it possible to rule both effectively and humanely? Queen Seondeok begins with the premise that it is only possible to achieve and hold power with the help of others. To be effective, leaders must be able to win people to their sides and keep them there. And yet, paradoxically, gaining the backing of “the people” often means sacrificing any semblance of normal relations with individuals. While this show uses many of the conventions of the biopic, it never strays far from these fundamental themes, making it less the story of a single ruler and more of a meditation on clashing political philosophies. It often deviates wildly from historical fact, but it provides a smart, nuanced look at the mechanics and costs of power.

From a production standpoint, the show is often uneven. This is very much a writers’ show, and at its best, it’s tightly plotted, with thematic depth, complex characters, and powerful payoffs. It’s not perfect - the initial episodes are exposition heavy and awkward, the action lags in places, and the set-up presents a giant structural challenge that the writers are never able to fully overcome. The directing is functional, but not particularly distinguished. It’s also a show that is far more fortunate in the casting of its antagonists than of its protagonists. On the plus side, Go Hyun Jung and Kim Nam Gil are fabulous, and their performances alone are worth the 62 hour investment in the show. On the down side, this skews the dramatic structure and emotional impact of the story in ways that become particularly problematic towards the end.

Issues aside though, this remains a powerful show, one that for all the political games, epic battles, and over-dramatic close-ups keeps returning to three abandoned children and the cost of breaking human bonds. And how often do dramas of any type provide both a strong, smart female protagonist and a strong,smart female antagonist (and surround them with gorgeous guys)?

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