Some of our favorite zombie shows and movies have been funny ones. Why? Because zombies are actually inherently funny as the shamble along groaning for brains. They can also be really funny because the people reacting to a zombie apocalypse act in strange ways that might not involve the kind of courage we might see in an episode of The Walking Dead. A new Korean romantic comedy streaming on Prime Video has lots of zombies… just not in the first episode.
Opening Shot: We see a roof terrace from above, as people run around in circles, as if being chased by someone. A group gathers together, we see their shadow, and then it looks like the head of one of the shadows busts open.
The Gist: Lee Jae-yoon (Park Jeong-min) is a soldier who is stationed at the top of Seoul’s tallest building; his platoon is tasked with providing air defense for the city. At 26, he’s relatively old for a new enlistee, but he’s not the oldest private in his platoon; that honor goes to Ra In-ho (Im Sung-jae), who’s 30 and already has a wife and son.
Both of them are not great at being soldiers; on overnight guard duty, their sergeant finds In-ho asleep and Jae-yoon on the phone with his girlfriend Kang Young-ju (Jisoo). He is overly protective of Young-ju, and he calls her in the middle of the night because he was worried when a man answered her phone earlier. She told him she was drunk at a welcome party for her new office and they’ll discuss it the next day.
During an air raid exercise, Jae-yoon and In-ho get the rest of the platoon in trouble when they drop a dummy cruise missile. As one of their punishments, their sergeant confiscates everyone’s phones; Jae-yoon gives his up just as an explanation text from Young-ju comes in.
In the background at Young-ju’s house, we hear reports about people being attacked by “lurching” attackers, and that there might be the beginnings of an epidemic of some sort.
When Young-ju has lunch at work, her new coworkers ask her if she’s going to wait the 18 months for Jae-yoon to be discharged, and if they intend on getting married when he does. After all, she’s 26, as well; the two of them met and started dating in college. On top of that, a mentor of hers at her new company, Seo Jin-wook (Kang Young-seok), whom she also knew in college, is encouraging her to take their friendship to a less businesslike level.
Jae-yoon finally gets a chance to call Young-ju, and she says she’s been thinking of things for awhile, and that they should take a break. After giving it a lot of thought, he realizes it’s best to let her go, and says so in a heartfelt voicemail. When she hears it, though, she wants to hash things out with him in person. One problem: That epidemic going on is some sort of zombie virus, and things are about to get ugly in the city.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Pair a romantic Korean comedy with a movie like Shaun of the Dead and you get Newtopia. The series is based on the book Influenza
by Han Sang-woon.
Our Take: Newtopia takes its entire first hour to set up the romance — and the issues — between Jae-yoon and Young-ju, but we don’t really see them together except for a flashback from when she tried to shave his head right after he enlisted. So, at least at first, their relationship is defined by their missed connections and his seeming overreactions to just about every time Young-ju doesn’t answer his calls or texts.
We also don’t see a ton of zombie activity in the first episode, though we see more than just hints of it by the end. The idea, we’re guessing, is that as the world around them goes insane and people struggle to avoid the zombie outbreak, the two are going to keep trying to find each other. Whether it’s to break up once and for all or to get together, we’re not sure.
What the show really concentrates on is the comedy aspects, like the fact that Jae-yoon and In-ho are bumbling simply because they’re “older” than the average new soldier, even though one is 26 and the other is 30. There is also the aspect that this small platoon basically patrols a rooftop on a skyscraper; when they’re ordered to do laps, they do those laps around a helicopter pad. There also seems to be a running joke about a private elevator for the soldiers always being broken, and Oh Soo-jung (Hong Seo-hee) an event manager at a hotel in the building persistently frustrated as the soldiers tromp through her event space when they deliver or pick things up.
But what we want to see is more of these crazy kids trying to find each other through a sea of the undead, and we hope that the action picks up more in the second episode.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Jae-yoon and In-ho see a plane hurtling towards the skyscraper as they carry empty gas cans through the event space.
Sleeper Star: We liked Hong Seo-hee as the event manager, Oh Soo-jung, because of her level of annoyance at anyone in fatigues who walks through the space she runs.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Jae-yoon and In-ho drop the dummy missile, they both yell “Boom!” and lay down, pretending to be dead. Do you have to pretend that everyone dies when you mess up during a training exercise?
Our Call: STREAM IT. We like the idea of Newtopia, though it feels like we could have gotten a little more context about the central romance in the first episode. We just hope the comedic zombie action picks up quickly.
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.