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Unique, edgy and brilliant
One of my top ten favourite kdramas from the past few years. Unforgettably sad, unforgettably funny. A fusion fantasy/scifi/healing drama about an understaffed, experimental and not very gentle team of Grim Reapers tasked with easing the pressure that Korea's high suicide rate is putting on an overcrowded Hell.
A Korean Hell just for Koreans, by the way -- one of my favourite scenes has the head of the Grim Reaper Escort Team, Park Joong Gil (played by Lee Soo Hyuk), rescuing a group of Korean souls during WWII who were being stolen off to a Japanese Hell by a pair of Japanese Reapers!
The Team Manager of the euphemistically named Risk Management Team of the Jumadeung Corporation is a parolee from Hell. Koo Ryeon (played by Kim Hee Sun) has a tough love approach to her work. For example, scaring silly a van full of would-be suicides who are using online instructions, by driving the wrong way through traffic. They beg to be allowed to live. In other cases she uses her supernatural powers when scare tactics dont work.
Her only employee is Lim Ryung Gu (played by Yun Ji On) who refuses to work more than his 8 hr shift (so rebellious in SK context!). The Jade Emperor(ess), the CEO of the squeakily antiseptic white-walled corporate Jumadeung skyscraper, decides to add a recently comatose soul wandering freely as a temporary worker to the team. Choi Jun Woong (played by Kim Seok Woo a.k.a. Rowoon) had just begged the heavens to give him an employee ID card by any means, when he fell off a Han River bridge trying to stop a suicide jumper.
The Team is alerted to each case by a 'negative energy' alert monitor app and they use a variety of scifi methods to investigate each one: entering the subject's dreams or their memories (with very Matrix-like FX), observations of their work environments along with persuasion on a personal level.
Jun Woong slowly transforms Koo Ryeon's approach to suicide prevention as he matures from a bumbling and irrepressible newbie into a hugely compassionate and effective intervention agent. The absolute and pure warmth of Rowoon's performance elevates what would have been a grittily comic Reaper story into something only Korea could have produced, a full length (16 eps at 1hr ea.) clear-eyed depiction of the cascade of forces which drive a person to fear tomorrow more than death.
I stopped at over two dozen listing all of the misfortunes woven into the stories of the dozen or so individual cases the Team handles, Each crisis is developed in original ways, often with an interesting point of view. An excellent compilation of the pressures of life in Korea, some of which are universal but some of which are unique to the history and sociological culture of the peninsula.
One woman feels so guilty over not believing the stories of the suffering of the Korean 'comfort women' enslaved into prostitution by the Japanese Army of WWII because her best friend was taken by them, that she contemplates taking her life. The Team asks her to meet with another sufferer who wanted to see someone who had known their mutual friend before she passed away, and so their pain is sweetly dissolved through tears.
The IMF crisis which deprived so many families of their livelihoods is seen through the eyes of a little child who only remembers a miraculous birthday, and the fried chicken event staged by the team helps to save him as an adult struggling with exam failure. The threads connecting the past with the present have seldom been so delicately indicated,
The show balances the unchanged penalty for suicide in the afterworld as a crime, with deeply moving episodes portraying individual suffering which elicits compassion from the viewer. The joy of Tomorrow is two-fold; it is exhilarating to watch Koo Ryeon stomping the bejeezus out of all the cruel and thoughtless people who torment others to make themselves feel better, and Rowoon's unique ability to project sincere love and care is as always a pleasure. Compassion is the true message of this beautiful show.
A StudioN/MBC show, with the composers Jo Seung Woo and Won Ho Kyung. The creators of the show, the writers,-- Park Ran, Park Ja Kyung and Kim Yu Jin, and the directors, Kim Tae Yoon and Sung Chi Wook, deserve enormous credit. Hoping to see more of their work.
A Korean Hell just for Koreans, by the way -- one of my favourite scenes has the head of the Grim Reaper Escort Team, Park Joong Gil (played by Lee Soo Hyuk), rescuing a group of Korean souls during WWII who were being stolen off to a Japanese Hell by a pair of Japanese Reapers!
The Team Manager of the euphemistically named Risk Management Team of the Jumadeung Corporation is a parolee from Hell. Koo Ryeon (played by Kim Hee Sun) has a tough love approach to her work. For example, scaring silly a van full of would-be suicides who are using online instructions, by driving the wrong way through traffic. They beg to be allowed to live. In other cases she uses her supernatural powers when scare tactics dont work.
Her only employee is Lim Ryung Gu (played by Yun Ji On) who refuses to work more than his 8 hr shift (so rebellious in SK context!). The Jade Emperor(ess), the CEO of the squeakily antiseptic white-walled corporate Jumadeung skyscraper, decides to add a recently comatose soul wandering freely as a temporary worker to the team. Choi Jun Woong (played by Kim Seok Woo a.k.a. Rowoon) had just begged the heavens to give him an employee ID card by any means, when he fell off a Han River bridge trying to stop a suicide jumper.
The Team is alerted to each case by a 'negative energy' alert monitor app and they use a variety of scifi methods to investigate each one: entering the subject's dreams or their memories (with very Matrix-like FX), observations of their work environments along with persuasion on a personal level.
Jun Woong slowly transforms Koo Ryeon's approach to suicide prevention as he matures from a bumbling and irrepressible newbie into a hugely compassionate and effective intervention agent. The absolute and pure warmth of Rowoon's performance elevates what would have been a grittily comic Reaper story into something only Korea could have produced, a full length (16 eps at 1hr ea.) clear-eyed depiction of the cascade of forces which drive a person to fear tomorrow more than death.
I stopped at over two dozen listing all of the misfortunes woven into the stories of the dozen or so individual cases the Team handles, Each crisis is developed in original ways, often with an interesting point of view. An excellent compilation of the pressures of life in Korea, some of which are universal but some of which are unique to the history and sociological culture of the peninsula.
One woman feels so guilty over not believing the stories of the suffering of the Korean 'comfort women' enslaved into prostitution by the Japanese Army of WWII because her best friend was taken by them, that she contemplates taking her life. The Team asks her to meet with another sufferer who wanted to see someone who had known their mutual friend before she passed away, and so their pain is sweetly dissolved through tears.
The IMF crisis which deprived so many families of their livelihoods is seen through the eyes of a little child who only remembers a miraculous birthday, and the fried chicken event staged by the team helps to save him as an adult struggling with exam failure. The threads connecting the past with the present have seldom been so delicately indicated,
The show balances the unchanged penalty for suicide in the afterworld as a crime, with deeply moving episodes portraying individual suffering which elicits compassion from the viewer. The joy of Tomorrow is two-fold; it is exhilarating to watch Koo Ryeon stomping the bejeezus out of all the cruel and thoughtless people who torment others to make themselves feel better, and Rowoon's unique ability to project sincere love and care is as always a pleasure. Compassion is the true message of this beautiful show.
A StudioN/MBC show, with the composers Jo Seung Woo and Won Ho Kyung. The creators of the show, the writers,-- Park Ran, Park Ja Kyung and Kim Yu Jin, and the directors, Kim Tae Yoon and Sung Chi Wook, deserve enormous credit. Hoping to see more of their work.
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