One of the recent additions to the literature genre is The Recipe Blog. It is characterized by insufferably long backstories rife with unnecessary details, long personal digressions and endless teases that it is about to get to The Big Reveal of, y’know, The Actual Recipe. [scroll scroll scroll “Where is it?!!! Aaaarghh, back to the Google search…]

It is easy to imagine the producers of “Jirisan” concocting this show much like the reader of a recipe blog: imagining the beautiful final product, struggling to get through the preliminary preparations, getting to the list of ingredients, then finally running out of patience, throwing them in a bowl haphazardly, giving it a few stirs, tossing it in the oven and going to have a very large glass of whiskey. It’s not that “Jirisan” is an hopeless, ugly mess that doesn’t merit a meal, but it needed a skilled chef at the helm to blend all of the elements together in to something that comes close to approximating the sum of its exceptional parts.

And the parts, in isolation, are a murderer’s row of impressive quality.

The supporting cast is Grade AA+++: Go Min Si as the fresh, novice ranger. Oh Jung Se (OH JUNG SE!!!) as the lonely veteran ranger. Jo Han Chul, Sung Dong Il and Jun Suk Ho are all terrific character actors. The mountain is a gorgeous setting to the show and viewers are treated to some outstanding drone shots of the scenery.

Jun Ji Hyun is the star and is every bit the talented actor needed to anchor a big budget drama. It’s not an award-winning role, but Yi Kang is a a solid lead character - enough complexity and development, a dry sense of humor and the tragic backstory. She is highly guarded personally but has a good development arc as the show progresses.

The other lead is Joo Ji Hoon who stands out more as an actor and his character, Hyun Jo, is the most intriguing of all. Joo Ji Hoon is really as complete a package as there is in the industry - all the physical attributes and a wonderful actor. He is warm and outgoing and understanding of Yi Kang and also exasperatingly driven to stop the killer that has escaped capture. Every time the show puts Hyun Jo in the spotlight, the energy of the show picks up noticeably.

All these various individual qualities, unfortunately, don’t mesh into a scintillating vehicle for entertainment. The chief culprit is, ironically enough, The Culprit. The murder mystery is flat out not particularly suspenseful and “Jirisan” never works out how to generate any measurable amount of tension. A fair amount of blame goes to a script that incorporates so many multiple timelines that anyone outside of a quantum physics practitioner is likely to struggle to make sense of. It also doesn’t help that the present day storyline has both main characters incapacitated to a certain degree and, as a result, incapable of interacting with each other. The show also starts out on a bizarre and awful sequence involving a rescue amidst a embarrassingly badly rendered cgi rockfall. The OST promoted a solo BTSer effort but it is wholly forgettable. And there’s little things like frequent splatters of blood that don’t look anything like actual human blood.

At no point (other than the opening sequence) is “Jirisan” tedious or unpleasant. But this production desperately direction and editing that made it’s little multiverse more accessible and the interaction between the cast members more meaningful and resonant. As it falls short on those areas, it’s very much a middle ground of a show - with some fine actors and a couple of intriguing main characters that are very much in search of a better blend between them.

Is it recommended? Kind of. Maybe? Not really or at least not strongly at all.