Lead cast: Lee Jae-wook, Lee Jun-young, Hong Su-zu
As with so many Korean dramas, The Impossible Heir begins with a violent flash forward – in this case, a handsome young man in a hotel room staring in disbelief at the bloody knife in his hands.
Who is he? How did he get there? Whose blood is that? Is the person whose blood it is dead? Is this man the culprit?
As intriguing openings go, this one is notably simplistic and unoriginal. But from there on in, things immediately get worse.
By the halfway point of the opening episode, you may realise you don’t care in the slightest how things got so bad for Lee’s character – that is, if you are even able to remember this trifling cold open by then.
7 of the best new Korean drama series to watch in March 2024
7 of the best new Korean drama series to watch in March 2024
In-ha is an heir to the powerful Kango Group but has an unusually large chip on his shoulder, and that makes him act like a brat towards everyone who crosses his path. This includes pickpocketing, even though he knows everyone lets him do it.
Tae-oh and In-ha quickly get into a fight, after which they become firm friends, connected by their macho bravado but also their dark backgrounds and shared frustrations: Tae-oh’s father is in jail for killing his mother (although she is still alive and on the run), while In-ha is looked down upon in his family for being illegitimate.
The pair form an alliance. Tae-oh will use In-ha to hit the big league, and in turn help In-ha gain control over the Kango Group. Tae-oh’s pitch includes the pithy epiphany that desperation is stronger than power.
We are not privy to any details of their plan but nevertheless, the story jumps forward and we catch up with them in 2013, by which point the pair are in university. Tae-oh works part-time jobs and In-ha is still a layabout, but we are led to understand that their mysterious plan is in motion.
While Hye-won is presented as a mirror of Tae-oh – they live in matching rooftop hovels on opposite sides of a thin alley and both attempt to dig their way out of unfair situations with stoic determination – she winds up being little more than an obstacle to Tae-oh and In-ha’s plan, as they both wind up falling for her and becoming jealous of one another.
Yet the show marches on, skipping ahead another five years by the end of episode two with still no light shed on their plan, besides it involving something called the “Co-Prosperity Cooperation Center”.
That the cast is led by a trio of characters who achieve the unfortunate paradox of being drearily plain and frustratingly opaque at the same time does not help matters.
Although they are hamstrung playing characters that are walking clichés rather than being fully fleshed out, none of the leads fares well in The Impossible Heir. The show’s humdrum staging fails to add any spark to a poorly paced scripts that flip through tedious melodramatic scenarios familiar to anyone who has ever seen a K-drama.
Given the show’s reported budget – relatively high at 20 billion won (US$15 million) for 12 episodes – the lack of visual pizazz is particularly striking. Nothing stands out and the show looks and feels a lot cheaper than it should.
One hopes that the awkward pacing and deliberate lack of narrative clarity are transitory, but they are hardly the show’s only problems. Barring massive across-the-board improvements, the outlook for The Impossible Heir at this point is bleak.
The Impossible Heir is streaming on Disney+.