Circle

Circle

9.5/10

Circle

Genre:                                   Episodes: 12                       Year: 2017

Mystery

Thriller

Fantasy

Synopsis:

As children, twins Woo Jin and Bum Gyun witness an alien arriving on earth, and shortly after their father disappears with her. 10 years later in 2017, Woo Jin is a hardworking student while Bum Gyun has just been released from prison due to his obsession with finding aliens. In 2037 earth is divided into Normal Earth, a heavily polluted area with many crimes, and Smart Earth, a clean and crime-free city. Kim Joon Hyuk is a detective who tries to enter Smart Earth to investigate a case of missing twins who disappeared in 2017.

Cast:

Yeo Jin Goo (Kim Woo Jin)

Gong Seung Yeon (Han Jung Yeon/Byul)

Kim Kang Woo (Kim Joon Hyuk)

Ahn Woo Yeon (Kim Bum Gyun)

Lee Ki Kwang (Lee Ho Soo)

Min Sung Wook (Lee Hyun Seok)

Seo Hyun Chul (Hong Jin Hong)

Jung In Sun (Park Min Young)

Han Sang Jin (Park Dong Gun)

Song Young Kyu (Han Young Woo)

General Thoughts:

When I really love a drama I either want to talk about it so much that I can sit down straight away and write pages and pages, or I don’t want to talk about it at all. ‘Circle’ definitely falls in the latter category. I adored this drama so much that I don’t really want to sit here and try to dissect it piece by piece, I simply want to enjoy it for the wonderful drama it was. That being said, I’ll still try to talk about this show in as much detail as I possibly can.

So many feelings

So what made ‘Circle’ so great? To start it was a tightly woven story. There were many layers and many details that knit together to form a tight, intriguing narrative. I’ve found a lot of mysteries lately have been coasting along on one question

One mystery after another

(most often being ‘who is the killer?’), which can work fine, but what made ‘Circle’ so interesting and so dramatic, is that we didn’t even know what the question was. We follow our characters and are just as confused as they are about the events that unfold. Granted, this mode of storytelling could completely fall apart and become too confusing, but this writer cleverly let the characters (and by an extension us) solve smaller mysteries while we worked our way up into the finale. It gave the show a beautifully cohesive feel, as each problem solved lead us to an even greater problem. At first it’s about finding out why students are committing suicide, then figuring out if Jung Yeon is an alien, then why her memories are gone, then finding who kidnapped Bum Gyun and why, and eventually what happened to Woo Jin. Having each episode split into two timelines ended up working really well, with each timeline being used to create tension throughout the whole series. The acting was excellent all around. Yeo Jin Goo has lately been picking projects that are only so-so (‘Orange Marmalade’) or that I have no interest in (‘Daebak’), so I’d kind of forgotten what an absolutely incredible actor he is when he’s given something decent to work with.

He has more talent in acting than I have talent combined

He was nothing short of dynamic in this drama. Every time I thought he couldn’t impress me any more than he already had, he pulled something else out and left me completely floored. The gradual buildup of tension in the series let Yeo Jin Goo start off lightly and slowly gather momentum as the story progressed. As our hero of Beta Project (the 2017 timeline), Woo Jin was such a pivotal character.

Pretty much how we all felt

He was our lead into this strange new world where aliens might exist and something strange and ominous is occurring. As he delves deeper into the mysteries, Woo Jin becomes an extension of the viewers- he knows what we know, learns what we learn, and ultimately reacts the way most of us would react. While he was a character that spent almost all his time being very confused and very afraid, as he was the viewers’ eyes and ears he needed to be confident in his conviction to find the truth even amongst his confusion, and relatable and understandable even in his fear- and that’s exactly what Yeo Jin Goo delivered. Next to him we had Ahn Woo Yeon, who played Woo Jin’s slightly derailed brother to perfection. He hit that perfect balance of crazy yet believable. Regardless of whether Bum Gyun’s theories were true or not, I believed that Bum Gyun firmly believed them himself. Unlike Woo Jin, Bum Gyun wasn’t a relatable, reliable insight into the story. Instead he was a catalyst for our confusion. He was elusive and sporadic, and we could never be quite sure if he was on the trail of a greater scheme or simply lost in his own world.

Kinda a lose-lose situation- he's either totally crazy, or there's someone secretly killing people

Ahn Woo Yeon played Bum Gyun with such conviction that it was hard to dislike him as a character- as confusing as he was, and as hard as he made things for Woo Jin, all we wanted was for the two brothers to get to the bottom of whatever was going on and live peacefully together again. In Brave New World (2037 timeline), Kim Kang Woo did a great job at driving the story along. I didn't find the mysteries in BNW as intense as in Beta Project (as if anything could be as intense as the mystery in Beta Project), but Joon Hyuk was a likeable hero.

What cuties

Similarly to Woo Jin in Beta Project, Joon Hyuk was our intro into this new world with all it’s new technologies. Kim Kang Woo incorporated aspects of both Woo Jin and Bum Gyun into his character, so we couldn’t be quite sure which twin he actually was. He had Woo Jin’s dedicated desire to find and save his twin while uncovering the corruption in Smart Earth, and he had Bum Gyun’s reckless obsession with the mystery at hand.

She's growing on me more and more as an actress

Kim Kang Woo also brought a maturity to the character that was completely his own, while always staying true to his character. Gong Seung Yeon was brilliant as the strange alien girl in both timelines. Though I occasionally questioned her character’s importance in BNW, the writers did a great job at ensuring that she was developed as a character and not just a plot device. While the plot was heavily driven by Byul’s creation of the memory box and her forgotten memories, it was her as Jung Yeon that made her an emotional aspect of the story rather than a purely logical one. She obviously has a deep desire to protect Woo Jin and Bum Gyun, mixed with a deep sense of guilt that it was something she created that ended up tearing the brothers apart. Gong Seung Yeon brought great depth and emotion to a character that could easily have ended up as a simple plot device. We didn’t want Woo Jin found only because Bum Gyun was searching for him, but also because Jung Yeon had been searching for him for 20 years. The villains, played by Han Sang Jin and Song Young Kyu, were brilliant. They were inconspicuous enough that they weren’t obvious villains, but both were able to produce an off-putting creepiness that hinted at a possible corruption.

So nerdy...so twisted

What the villains did so well in this story is that they were everyday people. Jung Yeon’s father was a scientist who was willing to do whatever it took to complete his project in the name of scientific development and bettering the human race.

This slightly sarcastic, slightly condescending role was a great fit

Dong Gun was a regular man who quietly took advantage of a situation to ensure it benefitted him most. Neither man was exceptionally cruel or pure evil, their morality just wasn’t quite as in line with everyone else. Having antagonists such as this opens the door for a lot more interesting storytelling as it starts questioning human nature as well as furthering a story. The supporting cast were all brilliant and fit their roles well, with Lee Ki Kwang being a particular standout. I’m not familiar at all with any of his acting credits, but he was so perfect in his role here. A lot of his scenes were used for comedic effect, with him bantering with Joon Hyuk- and Lee Ki Kwang’s simple, straight-faced humour worked really well in the situation. I was happily surprised to see he could also do a bit of heavy lifting when required- a standout being the time his traumatic memories began resurfacing. I was pretty impressed with his acting throughout the drama, and was actually a bit bummed when his character got a bit phased out at the end there. The directing of this drama was really slick, and was a great contributor the high tension that ran throughout the show. Music choices were absolutely perfect and raised the suspense immeasurably. 

The show gave just enough clues at just the right times

What Was Great:

Two Worlds:

What really makes this drama different from others is that it has two timelines being shown at the same time. It’s innovative and interesting, but also a huge risk- there were so many ways it could have gone wrong. And thankfully, the show managed to avoid all of those reasons.

Better than I could have hoped

While the cliffhangers in Beta Project tended to be a bit more thrilling than those in BNW, BNW still managed to have a lot of secrets and a lot of intrigue. Rather than knowing what would happen in Beta Project because we’ve seen events in the future, we’re still unsure how events will play out. A large part of this definitely came from the twin switch-up. Had Woo Jin been the centre in both timelines,

The humans in this drama are infinitely more dangerous than the aliens

BNW wouldn’t have been as thrilling, but by having Bum Gyun as the hero in the future timeline, it created a fear in the audience for Woo Jin. Woo Jin is our focus in Beta Project, so how is it that he somehow became lost while Bum Gyun was found? What really perfected the two world plot is how the stories gradually grew closer together. At first they were completely different, with Beta Project exploring the existence of aliens and Bum Gyun’s dangerous obsession, and BNW focusing on the mysteries behind Smart Earth. As the plot in each timeline continued, we could see that these mysteries were somehow linked and both our heroes in both the timelines were working towards the same conclusion. It’s clear that the writer knew exactly how this story was going to pan out, and chose the perfect amount of time to tell it- I cannot emphasise how drastically underutilised 12 episode dramas are. The story was tight and thrilling with the perfect amount of reveals at the perfect times. The merging of the two worlds at the end of the series couldn’t have been more perfect, and was a brilliant example of how confident our writer was. Having Woo Jin lose consciousness in Beta Project while being pursued by Dong Gun, and then waking up after being used as Smart Earth’s supercomputer was a great twist and an excellent way to merge two stories that had been completely separate until that point.

I'm so sad, but I'm so intellectually satisfied

It made sense how Woo Jin was captured and secretly used for 20 years, and of course the cloning added an extra sense of heartbreak to the scenario, making for a strangely bittersweet ending. Although I was completely heartbroken at the idea of Woo Jin’s death, I sort of loved the ethical complications it brought up in regards to cloning.

As far as cars of doom go, this was one of the better uses and best filmed

Memory was definitely a continuing motif in this drama- with Jung Yeon not remembering her alien heritage, Bum Gyun losing his memories, and Smart Earth secretly blocking citizens’ traumatic memories, and the show seemed to be making a pretty solid stand that memories are one of the most important parts of what make us who we are.

At least there got to be a little bit of happy

The finale took that a step further by questioning this conclusion with the introduction of Woo Jin’s clone. If memories are what make us who we are, what does that make a clone who has the body and memories of someone else? If this clone is Woo Jin because he has his body and his memories, what does that make the Woo Jin that died? I appreciated that the show let these questions hang in the air a bit. For the sake of the drama’s closure Jung Yeon and Joon Hyuk (after some turmoil) accept the clone as Woo Jin. It was a satisfying conclusion to an intense and gripping drama, as this acceptance on Joon Hyuk’s part brought about the brothers’ reunion we’d been longing for all drama long. However, the drama also didn’t exactly say that this was the one and only correct answer, and I love that right up to its ending the drama was making its audience think a bit deeper than we usually do.

What Wasn’t:

Slight Slowdown:

I’m sure that there probably were things in this drama that made it less than perfect, but I was so caught up in the story and the acting that I didn’t even notice any potential shortcomings. This was a drama that just really worked for me. Yeah, I was a little bummed when it was revealed that Woo Jin did in fact die, but then I was so into all the ethical questions that were brought up as a result of his death, that I appreciated the story taking that direction.

I also appreciated that he didn't stand around for 5 minutes staring at the car that was about to hit him 

I guess if there’s one tiny, slight downside to this drama (and only because I’m being super picky and don’t want to leave this section blank), there was the smallest lull in momentum just before the finale. Seriously, it’s so insignificant and lasts for such a short period of time that it doesn’t impact the enjoyment of the show at all. It’s just that after so many hours of racing momentum and heart-stopping cliffhangers, I just noticed one patch that wasn’t quite speeding along like the rest of the drama. Which is kind of fair enough, because boy did this drama rip along.

Recommend?

Absolutely. 

So many mysteries, so many thrills