Tunnel (2017)

To be candid, I was not sure if this would be a good drama because of how dark it seemed, however I watched the trailer and decided to give it a try.

This show was AMAZING! It has sci-fi elements as well as mystery, and drama. In some cases, it had comedy, but it does not show up often.

The acting was a little robotic at the beginning, but I think it fit the story very well because the characters start to open up more. In my opinion, it had great character development and growth.

This drama reminded me of the drama, "Signal" which is also really good. If you have seen that drama, I recommend this one for you (if you haven't seen "Signal" go watch it NOW!).

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I am not sure what made me decide to watch Tunnel, when so far all the dramas I have seen were of the heavily romantic verity. But something about it attracted my attention, so much so that it has also become the first show I watched on-going instead of marathoning as I have done so far.

Whatever it was, I thank my lucky stars that I choose this show to introduce me to the thriller side of dramaland, because it's one I now plan to explore.

At its core, this show is about people. Wonderful people; Angry people; Broken people; Hotheaded people; Closed people; Straightforward people. People who come together and find in each other a place to heal and to mend. A place to find closure.

And this, THIS, is what makes Tunnel a fantastic show. Not the mystery. Not the time travel element. Not the case-of-the-week format of the first half of the show. No, it's the people. It's these characters and the fantastic relationships that form between them. It's the way they navigate and evolve in the situation they have been thrust into. It's the way they start the show one way, and you love them, but then they end the show in a different way and you love them more than you could have imagined. It's the little things; the little looks, the little touches, the little hesitations, the little steps forward. It's the way they find this incredible balance between them.

I have to give such a huge, huge applause to the actors for portraying these characters so brilliantly, for making me feel every single thing alongside them, and for the writers for writing such nuanced characters. And for the casting director for choosing the right people; I can't imagine enough else as these characters.

There are a lot of good things about this drama, like the side characters who are equally amazing as the main trio and help make this show one to remember. I could talk about the mystery, and how it's never supposed to be a mystery to us the audience, and yet it still keeps us in suspense. I could talk about the killer, and how I think the writers wrote him perfectly because of what he turns out to be at the end. I could talk about how much I love the way the old and the new interact. I could talk about how it left me tense every episode, and how I bit my nails as I was watching. I could talk about a lot of things.

But really, I think I have said enough.

If you love character driven shows with a lot of heart and just a smidge of romance to make you all fuzzy inside, do yourselves a favor and pick this one up!

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Tunnel got a lot of comparisons to Signal in the beginning and I can see it a little bit. I don't think it was quite as good as Signal, but I still enjoyed it a lot and looked forward to it every week. The story was engaging and the characters were written well. I enjoyed the dynamics of the 3 main characters and how they interacted with each other. As with all time travel shows, there are a few plot holes, but nothing major enough to detract from the show.

Choi Jin Hyuk did a wonderful job as Park Kwang Ho. He put a lot of emotion into his performance and really twisted my heart for him and how badly he wanted to catch the killer and get home to his wife, Yeon Sook. Yoon Hyun Min also played Seon Jae well, and his progress as a character was interesting to watch. Same for Lee Yoo Young as Shin Jae Yi. She started out almost robotic, but it was a quirk of her character and not due to bad writing. When her shell finally cracks open, she is a sympathetic character.
I have nothing but praise for all the cast - excellent work!

The music was good, nothing stand out, but enjoyable all the same.

This one isn't really suitable for re-watch as the suspense is gone after you've seen it once.

I would definitely recommend it to fans of the shows genres.

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Time travel plot hole the size of a tunnel

- This drama was a solid 8/10 for the first 8 episodes, but unfortunately lost its pacing.
- I binged the first 8 episodes and struggled to get through the rest. The second half did not live up to the first half.
- I love interesting psychopaths but none are in this drama. I found them totally uninteresting, boring and shallow.
- Should have been 12 episodes max
- Liked the ML being clueless about modem tech; Hilarious, wish there was more.
- There's only so many times I can bear to see this team fail. They are constantly outwitted in the dumbest ways.

Overall rating 5/10
- 1 for Acting
FL acting was sterile. Liked the bromance between ML and Chief. Well cast minus FL
- 1 for Direction and Production:
All average nothing to write home about. Nothing wowed me but decent.
- 1 for Music:
Same as above
- 1 for Story:
Good concept but I don't think it was pulled off as well as it could have been. Illogical decisions from characters made me roll my eyes and concepts I wanted exploring were only touched upon. Time travel is hard to get right; without plot holes (This drama does not manage it).
- 1 for Watchability:
Great bingeable first 8 episodes. The rest were a struggle.

P. S - I Judge the English accent heavily.

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Good plot, good acting, good show.

The plot was interesting. Time travel was the catalyst, but rather than focusing on the time travel, the show was completely focused on the chase to catch the serial killer (which I liked). I enjoyed the character development between the ML and the other characters; tense moments, sad moments, relieved moments, shocked moments, it was all fantastic.

While there were some good plot twists, rather than being completely shocking, there were hints dropped so that the audience could scheme who they thought the serial killer was.

The show did have humorous moments to balance the seriousness.

The acting was amazing; I was completely immersed the whole time, on the edge of my seat while mirroring all the characters’ emotions.

One thing I didn’t like, however, was the purposelessness of some side characters. I felt that a couple characters were only used as plot devices once or twice and discarded. It would have been nice for them to be tied into the story better. Also the ML seemed to be a bit of a “God” character in that he didn’t seem to have any flaws or make any major mistakes. But it didn’t really detract from the show.

Warning: it was quite graphic, and there were closeups of disturbing scenes, but weapons and gruesome images were all blurred. I didn’t find it too much, but if you are easily disturbed by graphic imagery the. This show may not be for you. That being said, it is a murder mystery, so if you’re watching it’s a given that you aren’t easily triggered by such content.

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Warning, this review contains massive spoilers related to character identity and ending, so beware.

So I’m continuing my unplanned series of time travelling dramas, this time with Tunnel. After Signal and Kairos, there’s time (heheh, get it? TIME) to get into a bit more literal time travelling, since till now the dramas revolved more around time communication, not direct travel. This time, we’ve got it, there’s movement here, movement in time (cue Doctor Who intro).
So we have late eighties, when leather jackets were in and humanly treatment of suspects was unheard of. Park Gwang Ho, young team leader of violent crime unit, is on his way to catch serial killer who strangles women with their own stockings. Unfortunately something goes a bit wrong and Gwang Ho wakes up around thirty years in the future (cue Mr. Queen intro). Luckily this time Choi Jin Hyuk’s genitals are intact (don’t hit me, watch Mr. Queen for reference) but the status of his life, not much so. He get’s the job of junior officer in the same department that he worked in the eighties, but there’s a lot of questions he wants to know the answer to. One of them is who is the guy with the same name, that Gwang Ho replaced and why are people so obsessed with phones. The new problem arises when he finds another woman strangled with her stockings. Thirty years later.
First feeling that I get after watching first episode was flashbacks to Life on Mars (original BBC version). There we had similar situation but in reverse (travelling to past, not future). There also we had similar problems with fitting in to new environment that is using different investigation methods. And the same as in Life on Mars, I’ve instantly fell in love with dynamic between two main characters. Park Gwang Ho and Kim Seon Jae are both unlikable but with different reasons. Gwang Ho is loud and obnoxious, dive kicking the suspects whereas Seon Jae is silently judging everyone, not bothering with answering questions. Which later on, makes Seon Jae’s relationship with Shin Jae Yi perfectly believable. They’re both pretty weird.
Some things are unfortunately painfully obvious to the viewer. Like true identity of Shin Jae Yi being daughter of Gwang Ho. The viewer can clearly see where this motive is going couple of episodes before it’s finally revealed. But unfortunately, the amount of coincidences, like that is just too much and it makes some things obvious later on. Viewer just learns to look for patterns like that. Like every time someone’s identity is to be revealed, we can tell in advance what’s going on. And you know, in mystery drama, it shouldn’t really happen.
And since I’ve lost hope, that this review will be spoiler free, let’s talk about relation between Gwang Ho and Jae Yi, because how it develops is absolutely crazy to witness. Right away after knowing his true identity she’s staring to treat him as her father, even being urged to call him Appa. And you know, for any other character I wouldn’t be so surprised, but Jae Yi from the beginning was shown as this weird, socially distanced character who’s relation will people is absolutely antisocial. The idea of her being all of a sudden touchy feely to an almost stranger was for me very unnatural. Plus Gwang Ho from the bat starts to call her by her old name (that he learned from someone on the way, since till then he didn’t really know at this point that his wife was even pregnant) and is treating her as his daughter (with standard “you cannot date this man”) which is an absolutely cringe, since technically he’s younger than her.
We have very narrow number of characters here. There’re no new suspects, they all emerge from characters we already know. And this is not that bad of an issue, but just working with the same spectrum od characters all the times felt a bit stuffy at some moments. But that might’ve been just my feeling. Aside of that we have a very nice array of characters, to the point that we quickly get familiar with them.
I’ve wanted to ignore the ending, but I have to say something, because you know what, it absolutely spoiled my impression of this drama. After all this back and forth time travelling, I was sure that the reason for Gwang Ho to travel to the future, was to know the identity of the murderer and to finally catch him in the past. You know, so he wouldn’t commit all those crimes. But no, or at least it wasn’t shown, because it seems, that after catching him in the future, Gwang Ho came back to just live his life, and with all the information that he had (including his diary where murderer one by one describes his crimes) catching him would be fairly easy, right? So it seems that catching him in the future was partially pointless, without saving all his victims that he killed on the way.
But, cutting back to the chase. Overall, I find Tunnel a good drama. With some exceptions of course, but I have to admit, the characters and their chemistry was what finally bought me. And you know, you can never have enough time travelling plots!

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This sounds good reading the reviews but I found most of episode 1 boring, just the usual police thriller with nasty murders and I can not see much sci-fi. Then it gets interesting as he looks like catching the criminal and you are hooked into wanting to know what happens next. I find Choi Jin Hyuk's acting "wooden", but I suppose there's meant to be a contrast between him as the rough cop and Sun Jae as the cool, arrogant graduate cop. Much better with episode 2. The "transition" to the future was well handled. Others comment it is not convincing but you have to have some "suspension of disbelief", not work out every detail of how someone would adjust in that situation. Some of the violent scenes are too gory for me, I must say. But glad I stuck with it as it gets better with every episode. Sci-fi element at first seemed to be just a way of giving a twist to the story, then about half way it takes a central role again, as the way the characters' lives interact with each other in past and future becomes clearer. Very cleverly done. The only thing that bothers me is I wish they could do these shows without zero-ing in on the ghastly murders "as they happen" or the grisly photos afterwards. They look all too real for my liking. How about just a foot with the detectives turning away and making a terrified face? Anyway, leaving aside my sensitivity, what started as apparently just another plodding police thriller turned into a clever and riveting drama. Very moving finale, I wasn't quite sure what would happen until it did..Once again teaches me not to ditch shows based on impulsive reaction to first episode or two. Finally rates a 10/10*.

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Entertaining and well written

Tunnel is a classic example of a drama which can beat anything Hollywood will ever make.

Though it didn't explain anything about the tunnel itself, the way the story was weaved was enjoyable to watch.
Linking both past and future didn't confuse me as what ALICE did (worst time travel drama for me).

Characters also have great chemistry among themselves. Everyone got a fair share on screen and the camaraderie they have really makes you believe that they are co-workers.

It wasn't difficult to guess how the leads were interconnected but nevertheless, I fully enjoyed this and will recommend it for those who prefer action series rather than rom-coms

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