TV Review: Sisyphus: The Myth (2021)

Sisyphus: The Myth (2021) created by Jin Hyuk, Lee Jane, and Jeon Chan-ho

Han Tae-sul (Cho Seung-woo) is a brilliant polymath who saves the crashing airplane he is on. He runs a tech business and is about to make his most famous and fascinating invention--the uploader, a machine that enables time travel. Viewers know he will be successful because Seo-hae (Park Shin-Hye) has come from the future to keep him from being killed. And somehow to prevent the nuclear holocaust that is coming in a couple of months! A lot of other people are involved in the plot machinations, including Tae-sul's crazy brother (who isn't really crazy though he seems so because he knows about the time travel), two other groups who have come from the future with their own agendas, and the mysterious Sigma who is the mastermind behind all the bad stuff that happens. 

The action stays mostly in the present with visits to the future and the past. The story does a good job blending the action and the science fiction. Some romance is shoe-horned in and become more significant as the story goes on. The middle of the 16-episode arc felt baggy, adding backstories of the minor characters to fill out the running time (each episode is around 65-80 minutes long). By the end, the show turns into a bit of a soap opera (which is bad in my opinion) and it has an extended "this is all the time travel tricks I pulled" exposition that goes on longer than I would have liked. As with a lot of time travel stories, the logic and continuity does not hold up under scrutiny. Even with the flaws, I still got emotional in a good way and was satisfied with most of the ending.

Mildly recommended.

Currently (June 2021), this is only streaming on Netflix.