Between Japanese and Korean dramas, I've always had a lot more fondness for the former over the latter. Sure, Japanese dramas tend to be a little cornier and Korean dramas generally have the benefit of impressive production values, but I'll be damned if most of them aren't plagued with serious pacing issues. I'll admit my sample size of shows I've actually watched start-to-finish is pretty small (I can almost list them on one hand), but that's because all of them have sent me into an impatient spiral of waiting for something of consequence to happen at one point or another. Goong was cute until the melodrama got to be too much, Boys Over Flowers was surprisingly awful and nearly spent all of the tenuous good will I had built up for that entire franchise, Stranger was frequently and unforgivably boring despite its high-stakes political intrigue, and God's Gift - 14 Days got so repetitive with its red herrings that I started to resent how laughably inadequate these adults were when their one job was to not keep losing sight of a bratty little girl. Even Coffee Prince - a show that I actually found incredibly charming - had moments where I was wishing for a bit more plot and a little less adorable domesticity, something which I am usually all for!



Here's the thing: like most people, I am a sucker for a good time-travel hook. Anytime people are trying to change the past for the benefit of the future, I am absolutely here for it. I was all over CW's TV adaptation of Frequency despite its often rocky execution, and I'd heard enough positive buzz about Signal over the years (along with an enthusiastic endorsement from a co-worker) that I decided to get over my "it's complicated" relationship with Korean dramas and give it a shot. And boy am I glad I did!

The series starts off following Lieutenant Park Hae-young, a disillusioned profiler who somehow decided to become a cop despite nursing a fairly life-long distrust of them for bungling a case where a classmate was kidnapped and killed. But as time starts ticking on the statute of limitations, he comes across an old police walkie-talkie that connects him to the idealistic Detective Lee Jae-han - only to find out his new ally is operating 15 years in the past. The two learn to cooperate across time, Lt. Park giving Detective Lee what details he can to close cold cases in his present by trying to resolve them in the past. But meddling with the past isn't without its consequences, and both men experience various missteps that could lead to their downfall. 

Signal is not perfect - it still trips into many of the more melodramatic tropes - but still, it's just that good. The cases and overarching story are urgent and tightly plotted, and hard-won victories are sometimes still bittersweet. Also, the three leads  prove themselves more than capable of handling these amazingly nuanced characters, even if one of them stumbles out of the gate initially. Park Hae-young starts off prickly and pretentious, but as he softens and becomes more personally invested in this mysterious connection to Lee Jae-han, his circumstances and emotional vulnerability make him more and more sympathetic as he desperately tries to do right by the victims of his cold cases while dealing with the often explosive aftermath of any changes to his timeline. Lee Jae-han for his part is an amazing protagonist from the get-go. We follow him from his early days as a naive, bumbling, but dedicated member of the police force to the more jaded but still idealistic detective who retains his sense of justice, even as he becomes necessarily wiser and more cautious about the necessary risks of this arrangement and what they cost him. Cha Soo-hyun rounds out our group of heroes as the hardened, world-weary, reluctant colleague to Park Hae-young in the present, even as she is simultaneously Lee Jae-han's timid, enthusiastic, and somewhat besotted subordinate in the past, looking to prove herself as an effective member of the police-force. The interactions and relationships between these three people is at the heart of it all, and I became very deeply invested in the happiness and well-being of these fictional characters.

Of course, Signal deals with very upsetting crimes, so that aspect alone may not make it everyone's cup of tea. Having said that, it's definitely worth watching if you can stomach the level of violence on something like CSI. It's thoroughly engaging, engrossing, and emotional. It's not often that I can wholeheartedly recommend a series, but Signal definitely earns it.