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Pierce Conran

This article contains minor spoilers.
After bursting out of the gate with a brash cocktail of action, science fiction and oodles of melodrama, Pandora: Beneath the Paradise has not slowed down one iota, with a story that keeps taking one big swing after another.
Yet with so much going on, perhaps the show could use the occasional break to allow us to sit back and take it all in.
TV schedules the world over are built on the founding blocks of melodrama. Popular examples include American soap operas and Latin American telenovelas which are often fuelled by whiplash-inducing tales of powerful families teeming with betrayals and hidden identities.


Korea’s version of this popular medium is the makjang drama, and they are such a sensation in the country that they have moved from the usual daytime TV melodrama milieu to the evening schedule.
Recent years have gifted us a barrage of slick and addictive prime-time soaps, such as SKY Castle and The Penthouse.
Pandora: Beneath the Paradise – The Penthouse stars and writer reunite
These shows have been enormously successful, but the Korean entertainment industry never stays in the same gear for very long as it continually pushes to innovate.
After the success of prime-time soaps and with the rise of expensively produced genre streaming series, from Kingdom to Squid Game, writers have taken to creating a hybrid style of show which we could define as “genre melodrama”.
These shows add generous lashes of action and science fiction to the high-society shenanigans of traditional soaps, and are a natural progression given the direction the K-drama industry has been heading in. But are they the right one?
Only time will give us an answer to that question. But at this early stage it’s hard to be bullish about where this road leads, given the mixed and chaotic charms of shows like Sisyphus: The Myth and now Pandora: Beneath the Paradise, which was created by Kim Soon-ok, the mind behind The Penthouse.
Everything in Pandora: Beneath the Paradise is supercharged; the series tries to cram in just about everything it can think of. The stakes are sky-high from the get-go, but the story happens in a hermetically sealed vacuum that, as viewers, we never gain access to.
We can only gaze from afar, dazzled by pretty colours as the story whooshes past us.

In the story, such as it is, handsome, brilliant and rich young men run the tech start-up Hatch, which is developing a revolutionary brain-enhancing patch. One of them, Pyo Jae-hyun (Lee Sang-yoon), suddenly pivots to becoming a leading candidate for South Korean president.
Lee Ji-ah plays Jae-hyun’s apparently perfect wife, Hong Tae-ra, who is immediately revealed to be the assassin code-named “50”, trained by a secret organisation fronted by the Hanwool Mental Hospital. In her past life she apparently killed the father of her best friend, Go Hae-soo (Jang Hee-jin), during his presidential inauguration.
However, because she suffers from amnesia, she is unaware of this and believes herself to actually be Tae-ra, thanks to her fake sister Hong Yoo-ra (Han Soo-yeon).

Yoo-ra, who works for a mysterious and powerful behind-the-scenes orchestrator to keep up this years-long charade, is having an affair with Jang Do-jin (Park Ki-woong), Jae-hyun’s colleague at Hatch and Hae-soo’s husband. Yoo-ra is also in a secret relationship with Go Sung-chan (Bong Tae-gyu), the third principal figure at Hatch.
These are but the starting points of the story, and the net becomes increasingly complex as it folds over itself and these characters again and again.
A few other people appear, such as Do-jin’s brother Jang Gyo-jin (Hong Woo-jin), another Hatch founding member who has been in a coma for years; their conniving corporate CEO father Jang Geum-o (Ahn Nae-sang); and Tae-ra’s younger brother and fellow assassin “105” (Kwon Hyun-bin), who fired the actual bullet that felled Hae-soo’s father.
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Double crosses and shocking revelations, both hallmarks of melodrama, occur at lightning speed throughout the show, but in service of what? From the get-go, the motivations of the characters are never clearly stated, and as the shenanigans escalate, their true natures become ever more unclear.
In shows like The Penthouse, the story whips around at a dizzying speed with often ludicrous twists and turns, but we always understand what the main characters want, be it a mother protecting her child or a villain seeking power.
Things are not so simple in Pandora: Beneath the Paradise. But, rather than being guided through some beguiling mystery, we merely bear witness to a confused morass of heightened dramatic moments disconnected from everything around them.

If the manic maelstrom of the narrative wasn’t enough, the show’s aggressive style also adds a nauseating note. The music is brash and incessant, the camera jiggers around as though on a caffeine overdose, and strobing purple and red lights hammer our eyeballs into a painful stupor.
It’s the drama equivalent of a wicked morning hangover without ever having experienced the previous night’s high.
Pandora: Beneath the Paradise is surely saving some of its biggest surprises for its final few weeks, but its most gratifying point may turn out to be the one thing it can’t undo – it has to end.

Pandora: Beneath the Paradise is streaming on Disney+.


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Hong Woo-jin (left) and Lee Ji-ah in a still from Korean drama series Pandora: Beneath the Paradise. At its midway point the Disney+ show has given us a barrage of dramatic highs apparently unconnected to everything around them.

Lee Sang-yoon as Pyo Jae-hyun in a still from Pandora: Beneath the Paradise.

Jang Hee-jin as Go Hae-soo in a still from Pandora: Beneath the Paradise.

Park Ki-woong as Jang Do-jin in a still from Pandora: Beneath the Paradise.

Bong Tae-gyu as Go Sung-chan in a still from Pandora: Beneath the Paradise.

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Cho Seung-woo in a still from Divorce Attorney Shin. The series ends on a heart-warming note after several emotional and humorous highs.

Cho Seung-woo (left) and Kim Joon-eui as Sung-han and Gi-yeong in a still from Divorce Attorney Shin.

Kim Sung-kyun as Hyeong-geun in a still from Divorce Attorney Shin.

(From left) Kim Sung-kyun, Cho Seung-woo and Jung Moon-sung as Hyeong-geun, Sung-han and Jung-sik in a still from Divorce Attorney Shin.

Han Hye-jin as Seo-jin in a still from Divorce Attorney Shin.

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Bona as Lee Yeon-joo in a still from Joseon Attorney: A Morality.

Woo Do-hwan as Kang Han-soo in a still from Joseon Attorney: A Morality.

Cha Hak-yeon as tribunal spectator Yoo Ji-Sun in a still from Joseon Attorney: A Morality.

Woo Do-hwan (left) and Bona in a still from Joseon Attorney: A Morality.

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Cho Seung-woo as divorce lawyer Shin Sung-han in a still from Divorce Attorney Shin. The K-drama is a comforting ride with an engaging leading turn from Cho, but its seesawing morals may prove too much for some. Photo: Netflix

Kim Sung-kyun (left) and Jung Moon-sung as Hyeong-geun and Jeong-sik in a still from Divorce Attorney Shin. Photo: Netflix

Han Hye-jin as Seo-jin in a still from Divorce Attorney Shin. Photo: Netflix

Kim Sung-kyun (left) and Cho Seung-woo as Hyeong-geun and Sung-han in a still from Divorce Attorney Shin. Photo: Netflix

Cho Seung-woo as Sung-han in a still from Divorce Attorney Shin. Photo: Netflix

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Like having a hangover without the previous night’s high, watching Korean drama Pandora: Beneath the Paradise on Disney+ is an unsatisfactory experience
The set-up, with Lee Ji-ah as an amnesiac assassin, is complicated enough, after which double crosses and shocking revelations follow at lightning speed


Korean drama series on Disney+ has too much going on, and too many characters whose motives are hard to fathom. Rather than a coherent story we have so far endured a manic maelstrom of dramatic highs.
