Tomorrow: Tomorrow

May 22, 2022 8:16 AM - Season 1 (Full Season)

Made half-human and half-spirit by accident, a young man is employed by a company of grim reapers in the underworld to carry out special missions.

Dramabeans show page

MyDramaList show page

Fiction Horizon Review: Death Walks Wearing Elegant Suits In This Netflix Korean Drama: "Tomorrow is directed by Kim Tae-yoon and Sung Chi-wook and stars Kim Hee-sun, Rowoon, Lee Soo-hyuk and Yoon Ji-on. The cast plays the role of a group of grim reapers with a mission, to save people who are just on the edge of giving up on their lives. The show is a mix of fantasy, drama, and comedy, and it is based on the webtoon of the same name published by Naver. Tomorrow is what Japanese manga would call an Isekai story, where the main character travels to another world and then gets recruited by some force or organization from that world into a new job or quest. This is the case for Choi Joon-woong, a young man looking desperately for a job, but the opportunities don’t seem to come. When, sadly, Choi Joon-woong falls into a coma, he’s recruited into the crisis management team of death angels, as they work to help people before they commit suicide. If he does well, then he can wake up from the coma in just six months and spare his mother her suffering."

Kpopmap - “Tomorrow” (2022 Drama): Cast & Summary (with comparisons to the webtoon imagery)

kbizoom.com: Kim Hee Sun and SF9 Rowoon shared their feelings on the ending of K-drama “Tomorrow”: “I was happy to deliver a good message”

posted by oh yeah! (4 comments total)

This just finished up its Netflix/Korean tv broadcast run. Overall, I liked it, though I wouldn't rank it as one of the greats. MyDramaList shows 3 writers, all with no other shows to their credit, which might explain why something felt 'off' to me tonally. And while I think the show's heart was in the right place in wanting to be hopeful/uplifting, many of the rescues felt too pat. Like, I know that sometimes a kindly intervention can save a suicidal person from going through with it, but not always. Still, it had me crying hard pretty much every episode, so, I'm glad it was a weekly-schedule series rather than a binge-watch.

The cast was all great. Rowoon is adorkable. Lee Soo Hyuk has a unique beauty -- his features are so sharp/triangular there's just something automatically otherworldly about him. Yun Ji On was saddled with an awful hairstyle for the majority of the season and a character quirk of nose-picking, so, I look forward to seeing him in something else where he starts out less repellent. I don't think I've seen lead Kim Hee Sun in anything else, so I probably can't appreciate the drastic fashion choices like adopting the webtoon character's short pink hairstyle. But I liked her well enough. And I always like to see Kim Hae Sook, and she got to rock some fabulous outfits as the Jade Emperor.
posted by oh yeah! at 9:17 AM on May 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

I wanted to like this more than I did. I'm never one for anything particularly jingoistic so two of the episodes felt jarring - interesting to see it from a non-US perspective though, especially as I'm sure we've sent out plenty in the same vein for other people to have to grit their teeth through. But yes, I agree that many of the resolutions were very pat, and they didn't spend nearly enough time on what I was watching it for, that being the Reaper workplace politics. Oh well.
posted by daikaisho at 12:50 PM on May 23, 2022

So is this like Dead Like Me as a procedural?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:13 PM on May 31, 2022

While 'Tomorrow' has a similar 'regular human becomes a Grim Reaper' premise to 'Dead Like Me', I don't think they have much in common tone-wise. 'Tomorrow' is much less grim -- Rowoon's character, Choi Joon Woong, is only temporarily inhabiting the spirit world due to his coma, not dead forever like George was, and the goal of each episode is for him and the other Reapers in the Risk Management Team to get the at-risk-person not to kill themselves. It's more of an anthology series/episode-length-PSA than a procedural.
posted by oh yeah! at 3:24 PM on May 31, 2022 [1 favorite]