‘Tunnel’ is a K-drama that aired from March 2017 until May 2017. Since I’m rather obsessed with police dramas, two of my friends recommended this one to me. I blame them fully for the two day binge of the 16 episode drama that followed.
‘Tunnel’ tells the story of a time-travelling detective Park Gwang-ho. In 1986, he’s trying to find the serial killer who marks the young women he kills with dots on their ankles. While out one night, following a hunch, the detective gets hit in the head in a tunnel. When he wakes up, he finds himself thirty years in the future, in the year 2016.
The Characters
Park Gwang-ho is portrayed by Choi Jin-Hyuk who you might know from ‘Flower Crew: Joseon Marriage Agency’, ‘The Heirs’ or ‘Pride and Prejudice’. He did a really good job and I have to say, I’m a little bit in love with his low voice. He could record himself reading the phone book and I’d pay for it. Though I do have to mention one thing, the make-up at times was rather bad. I’m not complaining that I had to look at his jawline, but it was for all the wrong reasons. The color difference between said jawline and his neck was very distracting and took me out of the story a couple of times.
In the year 2016 we also have detective Kim Sun-Jae, played by Yoon Hyun-Min who is in the drama ‘My Holo Love’. He does a really good job portraying the desperation of Kim Sun-Jae. I can’t go into detail without giving away the plot, so just take my word for it, I guess. He’s really good.
There’s also the interesting character of Professor Shin Jae-Yi, played by Lee Yoo-Young who’s also in ‘The Lies Within’ which I wrote a review about. She’s a professor in criminal psychology and helps out with the profiling.
The story itself has multiple levels to it. There’s the storyline in 1986, the storyline from 2016. There’s the murders and the search for the perpetrators, the main serial killer. Then there’s Park Gwang-ho who’s looking for his wife in 2016. All of these pieces come together quite nicely, though I do felt like the last three episodes were kind of dragging along, stretching to fill the time they had left.
Overall
Quick shout out to the people who made the opening sequence, because it was really fun to watch. It reminded me of old school detective shows with the little intro jingle. I felt like it fit the show like a glove.
You can find the show on Netflix. Though I found a couple of mistakes in the subtitles that annoyed me so much. At one point, they wrote ‘herz’ instead of ‘her’ and I almost threw my laptop of my bed.
Overall, if you like murder mysteries and police dramas, definitely give the K-drama ‘Tunnel’ a try for its solid story and great performances.
Here’s the trailer.
