Tunnel

I wrong a big long angry review after watching the first 4 or 5 episodes. It was almost unwatchable for the first 2-3 episodes -- terrible writing, cringe overacting, everyone's emotions were completely over the top, you didn't care about any of the characters, and worst of all, the main guy is just about the worst heap of steaming toxic masculinity ever to grace the silver screen. He punches and kicks everything, bullies everyone, and is one of the more unlikeable characters I've had the misfortune of watching.

Sooooo, it turns out, it gets better. A LOT better. My wife wanted to keep watching so I stuck it out, and I'm glad we did. The first truly great episode in my opinion was #7, which is almost halfway through. But from there on out it takes many twists and turns--many of them predictable (but still satisfying) and several others which caught us by surprise.

It probably helps to think of this show as being a bit like WandaVision, where the 1986 backstory is deliberately overacted and corny because it's (I'm guessing) mimicking the way Korean dramas/sitcoms were back in 1986. The characters, acting and writing all become significantly more mature as the 2016 timeline evolves.

To be fair, there is still some weakness in the second half: a bit of manufactured drama from characters not telling each other critical pieces of information, poor decision-making by the police crew, and even some straight-up melodrama in the latter half, particularly in the last 3 episodes. But it's forgivable because the story is really solid. It's a very, very good story, and the first 6 episodes were more or less necessary for setting up all the complex twists and turns it takes in the second act. Oh, and the main guy becomes much more watchable after the first half, as he matures as a human being. His toxic masculinity was intentional and it gets fixed as the story unfolds.

It's pretty obvious why there's already one remake, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to see a Korean or Hollywood remake at some point with a higher budget. It's a fairly unique story that's hard to pass up.

There are definitely some timeline continuity issues, and they leave more questions open than they answer by the end. So don't come looking for great sci-fi here.

But as a crime drama, this is about as solid as it gets, and my wife was bawling at the end. I might have had a sniffle or two. I'd rank this up there with Beyond Evil, Stranger/Secret Forest, and The Guest as one of the top non-romantic kdramas out there.

Long story short: Stick with it and you'll be rewarded.

Family of three adults and we all watched together. After one episode we were hooked! Watched one or two episodes every day and sad that we have completed our journey. We loved the characters and story. We have watched many many TV shows and movies this past year and this has to be our favorite, by far.

This series has an unusually smart plot. The main character travels through time unintentionally, as it eventually turns out, to solve crimes that have been committed by a serial killer. What makes the story unusual (even original) is that unlike in most time-travel plots he travels to the future, not to the past. Surprisingly this works out pretty well. What is also unusual for a thriller is that the suffering of the families of the victims is much more central to the story than usual. This is in line with the main idea of the show, according to which police detectives are not simply supposed to catch criminals but rather to make sure that they cannot perpetrate further crimes. While I think that this aspect was exaggerated in Tunnel for the emotional effect, I think the concept as such is certainly commendable and still worked reasonably well in the plot. The writers handled the obligatory plot twists very well. The viewer is led down several garden paths (most importantly concerning the identity of the main character's child and the identity of the serial killer in the future) and starts wondering about apparent consistency mistakes that the writers of the story made, but then everything falls nicely into place. There were some things I didn't like. For one, it was too long and sometimes became slightly boring and slow, especially toward the end. The same story could have been told in about half as many episodes without omitting anything important and would have been more effective that way. Many unreasonable setbacks in the investigation could have been avoided if the main characters had communicated with each other, especially if they had told each other about their hunches and what they are planning to do next. This was at times very annoying. Another annoying thing was that the main character was constantly and needlessly saying and doing things that were giving away that he came from the past. While I suspect that this was supposed to function as comic relief, I didn't think it was funny but simply unrealistic. While there were similar annoyances, I think this was a particularly good and intelligent thriller series. The plot twists were unexpected but believable, the story was unpredictable but not overly complicated. The acting was rather good not only by the main but also by the side characters. Finally, what I liked best was that the teenagers from the past who grew up to be the bad guys in the future were cast so that they resemble their grown-up self remarkably. This was done almost as well as in Looper and shows the effort that went into making this series.

The beauty of this show is how little the time was spend around time travel and yet completely en-gulped by the characters and their development around the very concept of time travel. I think it is one of the very few shows nowadays that have not tried to explore the scientific reasons and get struck in those, rather a beautifully woven story of balancing ambition and personal life and deriving purpose from one another with a true happy ending.

This is a great show. What a story! I was reading the storyline and had thinking it could be a weird series. But, I'd surrender to my curiosity and got addicted to every episode. One of the best korean dramas that I've ever watched. The parallel between past and present is awesome. Park Gwang-Wo's 30 years of absence from 1986 and 2016 is the center of the show and the way that he discovers the connections between these two times and how the things are connected turn this show a good one. Good twists, good cliffhangers. If you aren't into korean dramas but want to give a chance to try, this is a good opportunity. Nice entertainment.