When Tim and I agreed to take a break from Netflix to catch up on all the great TV on all the other streaming services we have, my major concern was how would I access K-dramas. Netflix has, I think, a better selection of international TV than any other service, with not just one or two but dozens (if not hundreds) of shows from every country it operates in.

But we really did need to reduce the selection of available TV to a list slightly less overwhelming, and in the four months since we suspended our Netflix account we have barely dented the still very long list of TV shows to catch up on. There were even still a small number of K-dramas available so I thought I really should check one out.

Snowdrop (JTBC 2022) is a political melodrama set in late 1987, when South Korea is finally due to hold a democratic election that will end its dictatorship. It’s largely set in the dormitory of the fictional Hosu Women’s University where the young women live under strict rules. Our heroine is Eun Yeong-ro (played by Jisoo, from the girl group Blackpink), a freshman who is soft-spoken and very private.

When her very popular roommate Ko Hye-ryeong (Jung Shin-hye) is asked out on a group date, Yeong-ro goes along and there she meets Lim Soo-ho (Jung Hae-in, who starred in the film Tune in for Love). There is an immediate spark between them. And then a few days later he turns up in her dorm room covered in blood. He is being chased by the Agency for National Security Planning (ANSP) who claim that he is a North Korean spy. Thinking that this is an excuse from the ANSP to arrest and beat up a pro-democracy protestor, Yeong-ro hides Soo-ho in the dorm.

After a series of events that I’m not sure quite make sense once the full plot has been revealed, everyone in the dormitory ends up being held hostage by a group of North Korean agents, with the ANSP camped outside ostensibly trying to free the hostages. But complex politics are at play, with North and South Korean politicians trying to use the crisis to influence the upcoming elections. It becomes a drawn-out stalemate with an abundance of secret identities, questions of who can be trusted, and whether any political ideology is worth dying for.

The network JTBC describes this as a black comedy and political satire. The first few episodes are fairly light, with humorous moments and clearly satirised people in positions of power. But from about a third of the way through the series it all becomes very tense and serious. Then, the only levity comes from the antics of the politicians’ wives, who are very much figures of fun.

Honestly, I didn’t love this show. Jisoo and Hae-in have great chemistry and are very good actors, but their romance felt misplaced in this story. The character of Yeong-ro is pretty wet – she spends half her screen time crying or quaking in fear. Which are understandable reactions to being held hostage, but do not make for an empowered or interesting lead character. There’s also a lot of the wrist-grabbing, shoving the woman around scenes that I thought had disappeared from more recent K-dramas. That paired with the politicians’ wives made the show feel pretty misogynistic.

There are other women characters who are better on the feminism front. The dorm’s head Mistress Pi (Yoon Se-ah) is a severe woman who is pro-democracy but has some complex motivations related to flashbacks we see of her past. Jang Han-na (Jung Yoo-jin, who was also in Tune in for Love, as well as the show Romance is a Bonus Book) is an ANSP agent who has somehow never seen before this current mission that the ANSP is corrupt and violent, because when that becomes evident she quickly goes rogue to save the students.

The political message isn’t very clear, aside from that the authoritarian ruling party in South Korea was willing to do anything to cling on to power. Looking this show up, it was apparently the subject of controversy both before and during its initial run. The primary complaint was that the show implies North Korean spies were involved in pro-democracy protests, which undermines the historical legacy of the brave South Koreans who risked their lives to peacefully demand democracy. I don’t know if the series was edited after the initial complaints but that wasn’t what I understood the plot to be. The missions of the Northern spies don’t really make any sense so it is entirely possible this was a post-production edit.

Misgivings aside, I did enjoy this enough to stick out all 16 episodes, with an average length of 90 minutes each. It’s very well made, with great actors and though the story doesn’t make sense, it is gripping.

I think it’s best not to expect historical accuracy or brilliantly planned out plot from Snowdrop. I’d advise approaching it as a melodrama where you never know who is going to double-cross whom, which of the fortune teller’s weird predictions will come true, and whether Sandra Bullock’s character in Speed was right that “relationships based on intense experiences never work”.