Ailiseu

If you like 24 series, I think you'll like this too. However I find there's a bit too much love triangle in the series. It has action, thrills, suspense, love, friendship, betrayal, some mystery on the IRIS organization. The leading actress is pretty & make it more enjoyable to watch. In summary, it's a very good show if you can don't mind the love story & love triangle.

Wikipedia gives the following information: "Iris is a South Korean espionage television drama series broadcast by KBS in 2009. With a budget in excess of 20 billion won (17 million USD), it, along with its spin-off Athena: Goddess of War, share the record for the most expensive Korean dramas ever produced. Premiering in October 2009, the series was a critical and commercial success, with an average viewership of over 30% in addition to ranking as the top program consistently every week after its debut. The series also took home many of the highest honors at the 2009 KBS Drama Acting Awards, including Byung-hun Lee winning the top recognition, the Daesang Award. Among other nominations and recognitions, Lee and Tae-hee Kim were also named as one of the best on-screen couples."

My Review In One Breath: This series (20 episodes, 60 minutes each) concerns a National Security System agent who attempts to take down a secret organization. After the introductory opening episodes, the missions are similar to what one would find in the American "24" series (excluding the "real time" element), with agents attempting to stop terrorist attacks with the use of satellites and information support technicians. Of course, this is in the Korean style with some romance and melodrama blended in. Acting is top notch, with Byung-hun Lee in the lead role and a very good supporting cast: Tae-hee Kim (his love interest and fellow agent), Seung-woo Kim (a North Korean agent) and So-yeon Kim (as the gorgeous North Korean sniper). Production values are slick, the scoring is great at times, and the pacing is very fast for a K-drama with plenty of shootouts (a few of which are fantastic) and suspense. Storyline is clichéd but the secret organization is intriguing and represents a brilliant little twist on the North/South Korean conflict. Consequently, the relationships between the characters change significantly in exciting ways and the viewer will have an emotional investment in the protagonists. Highly addictive stuff.

Lee Byung-hun stars in one of my favourite movies "A bittersweet life" so I am always going to be generous with my rating in whatever he is in. As usual he puts in a great performance along with the whole cast and there are some really great action scenes which reflect the budget. My issue is the story does not flow as well as it should and the series concentrates on the big explosive scenes and not enough time on the development of the characters. Enjoyable action packed drama but could have been great.

This is a review of season one. The story line is fast paced and keeps your interest with tension. The production values are better than average for a Korean TV series, with the exception of the then, trendy, camera jerkiness which is horrible at times. Don't expect the production values to be as good as a movie.

There are the typical plot holes, but the show moves fast enough you can mostly ignore them. It is amazing to me that still, in 2020, most Korean shows never admit the ability to track a cell phone for location or recent calls after a bad guy or phone number has been identified. Regardless, I didn't mark this 2009 show down for that omission because my review is in comparison with other Asian dramas.

The show is well written enough that I couldn't always tell what was going to happen next, which I really enjoyed. Most shows follow pretty standard plot lines and this one follows a common overall plot arch, but the details were often difficult to predict, especially early in the show. Later in the show it becomes more formulaic.

The main characters aren't the best actors in the world, but they had chemistry with each other and with others, so that worked well.

SPOILER ALERT! I have to admit that I was disappointed in the tragic ending which I assumed was a vehicle to pull the female lead back into the spy agency. But, turns out that is not the case. So, just another Asian drama with a tragic ending.

I am usually very analytical (an engineer by education), but I generally want my shows to lift me up at the end, so that is entirely emotional and I did not enjoy the ending.

I just want to mention that Season Two is mostly new characters, weaker writing and weaker production values. It starts roughly 3 years after season one.

A stunning miniseries from South Korea about the 'NSS' (the South Korean Secret Service). Pardon me if I struggle with the character (or actor) names, but several performances are quite stunning. Character-development and -relationships are superb, irony occurs frequently, and there's plenty of action to match the slower sweet scenes showing the developing love-story between Choi Seung-Hee, the pretty female Service leader, and Kim Hyun-Jun, a stud recruit to the spy service. Talk about star-crossed lovers! They get separated, find each other, and then lose track of the existence of each other for months, but only after some very near connections. It's one of those: 'HEY! HEY! Look to your right - she's still alive... HEY! HEY.. Oh No..!' Unexpected sentimental stuff when you are are watching a cold-hearted spy & intrigue show.

IRIS also features a 'cross-over' character {that's a term I invented, by the way, so credit me if you use it!}: a character who switches sides, for some reason, to aid the protagonist. Example: the cowboy who breaks free from the wealthy townfolk in 'SHANE' and rides out to warn SHANE about the pending ambush. In IRIS, it's a pretty North Korean agent who falls out of favor with her bosses, and joins Hyun-Jun in his quest to get to the bottom of this IRIS conspiracy (after a few attempts to kill him, of course).

Also in the show is one of those super-assassin types, whose imminent presence is signaled by the camera focusing on his distinctive cowboy boots. Lots of fist-fights and shoot-em-ups to go with some well-staged car chases. Plenty of double-crosses and plot twists. It has everything U.S. network primetime action shows DON'T have. Like I said, run -- don't walk - to tune this thing in. I am writing this in early December: if you have down-time this month, add IRIS to the mini-series that will dominate your time, instead of clearing snow.