Stream It Or Skip It?

Usually when there are American actors in an international show, especially one from East Asia, those actors — how can we say this? — aren’t our best. But in the new South Korean spy thriller Tempest, there’s a surprising number of faces in the cast that will be immediately familiar to American viewers.

TEMPEST: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A woman follows a man up a set of stairs, watching him navigate a throng of reporters and protesters.

The Gist: Seo Mun-ju (Jun Ji-hyun) is a politician and a diplomat who was South Korea’s ambassador to the UN until she abruptly resigned. She’s back home, standing by the side of her husband, Assemblyman Jang Junik (Park Hae-joon) as he gets ready to run for president. It’s difficult, because he’s the leading candidate for the opposition party, not hers. But loyalty to her husband overrides her political ambitions. All she wants is to go for her morning runs without being followed by security. She’s been so stressed by having her husband run, she’s been having nightmares about being at campaign events and being shot in the neck.

North Korea has been agitating about developing a nuclear weapon, and the American president (Spencer Garrett) hasn’t backed down from the threats. Reunification is one of the country’s most divisive issues, and Jang has been against it. But when he and Mun-ju go to a pro-unification church mass, people on the anti-unification side feel he’s turned on them.

Inside the church, as he finishes his speech, Jang is approached by a man in camouflage, who shoots him in the neck, just like she saw herself getting shot in her dreams. As he bleeds out, a mysterious man, Baek San-ho (Gang Dong-won), who was filming Mun-ju from a balcony, tackles the gunman, who takes a cyanide pill and dies.

In the aftermath, Mun-ju gets berated by Jang’s mother and grandmother, who always looked down on her for being from a poor family and choosing a career over starting a family. Jang’s brother Jungsang (Oh Jung-se) gets some ire as well when he tells the family he’s going to run for president in his brother’s place. But then a lawyer comes in and tells the family that the entirety of Jung’s estate is going to Mun-ju, and the Jung family goes nuclear, accusing her of having something to do with his death.

San-ho offers his help to protect her; he’s a Korean-American with a security and military background. What she doesn’t know is that he’s been on her radar for awhile, and that he’s offering his services because an American contact got in touch with him on behalf of a client who knows she’s in danger. He shares that he heard Jung’s assassin say the same thing Mun-ju heard before he died, and it’s a startling revelation.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Tempest reminds us a bit of The Diplomat.

Our Take: Tempest, written by Chung Seo-kyung, is an interesting show because it has a well-known international cast. Usually, American characters on international shows are played by unknown actors who are, um, a bit stiff and unsure of themselves. But the cast of this show includes Garrett, John Cho, Brooke Smith, Christopher Gorham, Michael Gaston and other familiar faces.

Except for Garrett, though, we don’t see any of them in the first episode. The episode needed to set up how Mun-ju and San-ho team up, and the factors that are conspiring to eliminate her, though we’re not sure if the people trying to get rid of her are the Jung family or someone else.

There is certainly potential for a lot of twists to the story, especially when the political complications are added in. We suspect most of the American cast members we mentioned above will be playing either American government officials or CIA/FBI/NSA-type characters. How much we’ll see them is anyone’s guess. But the fact that they agreed to roles in this show means that they aren’t just cameos.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Mun-ju and San-ho see that Jung’s killer met with his brother Jungsang in the hours before the assassination.

Sleeper Star: It’ll definitely be interesting to see the American cast named above.

Most Pilot-y Line: As he loses consciousness, Jung tells his wife “Peaches…”, related to something he said in the car going to the event. We’re sure there’s something in that message, but we’re not sure what.

Our Call: STREAM IT. With an excellent international cast and a potentially twisty espionage story, Tempest definitely shows potential in its first episode.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.