Murder, birth secret, unrequited love, family drama and sweet romance all rolled in one. Is this the series you should watch? Find out now!

Characters:

• Lee Seung-gi as Eun Dae-gu
• Cha Seung-won as Seo Pan-seok
• Go Ara as Eo Soo-sun
• Oh Yoon-ah as Kim Sa-kyung
• Ahn Jae-hyun as Park Tae-il
• Park Jung-min as Ji Gook
• Sung Ji-roo as Lee Eung-do

Details:

• Korean
• 20 episodes
• Original run: May , 2014 – July 17, 2014

Quick Rundown:

The violent crimes unit at Gangnam Police Station welcomes four new recruits – Eun Dae-gu, Eo Soo-sun, Park Tae-il and Ji Gook, none of them joins due to real passion for the job. Dae-gu harbors a mysterious grudge against team leader Pan-seok, Soon-sun is a muddle-head who applied to the police academy seven times before being accepted, Tae-il is a rich playboy and Gook just wants to live in Gangnam. They will need to bond together and act as a team to solve cases and uncover the past.

Estelle’s Take

I’ll be the first to admit I never understood why Lee Seung-gi has such a huge fan base and is everybody’s favorite celebrity, but after seeing this show I can kind of understand. He is an great actor and is really dedicated to what he is doing, which shows in his performance. However, LSG falls a little flat sometimes and his character in Surrounded does not really lend him much creative license since he basically goes from angry to sad back to angry. Cha Seung-won as Seo Pan-seok, on the other hand though, was truly incredible, and it is no wonder he is considered as one of the top stars in dramas. Often times he is not even saying anything and yet every emotion is clearly on display, which says a lot for his command of facial expressions. He can be happy or sad or remorseful or anything in between at the drop of a pin AND be completely convincing.

Go Ara and the rest of the gang were okay, especially since Go Ara had pretty much the same dumbfounded or contemplative look as in Reply 1994. It’s not to say she wasn’t good, but she didn’t take it to the next level by any means. Luckily these characters weren’t as important, and even the love line was not concentrated on too much, taking quite some episodes for hand holding so forget about that coveted kiss (okay, they kissed like once)! When any of these romantic interactions happen though it is quite pleasant and sweet, but got a bit repetitive towards the end (because it is just hand holding for the win). There were no confessions or relationship reveals to other characters so the whole thing was kind of wishy washy and felt like it wasn’t really going anywhere. Once the camera goes off, there is no doubt that LSG goes back home to Yoona and Go Ara heads out to hang with friends. Their story wasn’t much too compelling.

Good thing though that the series itself is more about the murder mystery it started off with and that thread carried through its entirety. I enjoyed the unraveling of the story despite the fact that you kind of know the truth more or less ahead of time, but it was still satisfying to watch the villains finally get caught, although I fear the crash of the villains happened a little too quickly.

Is You’re All Surrounded worth watching? I would say so. It is a solid choice, but not a “must watch” by all means. However, you would not regret binge watching all 20 episodes in say, oh a day or something (there are 24 hours in a day after all :P).

This & That:

• Lee Seung-gi is dating Yoona from Girls’ Generation
• Go Ara previously starred in Reply 1994 (Team Chilbong!)
• Ahn Jae-hyun recently appeared in My Love from the Star and will star in an upcoming Chinese film called Wedding Bible alongside Yoo In-na.
• The projector Dae-gu uses is called Rollei Innocube, produced jointly with SK Telecom.