When diving into a Korean drama on Netflix, viewers often anticipate episodes to extend beyond an hour, even in the realm of “light” comedies. However, the premiere episode of the workplace comedy Undercover Miss Hong defies this expectation, running an impressive 74 minutes and packing a substantial narrative punch within that timeframe.

Opening Scene: The episode kicks off with a captivating animation that sets the stage, taking us back to the pivotal events of 1997.

Core Storyline: Hong Keum-bo, portrayed by Park Shin-hye, is a relentless investigator working for the Securities Supervisory Board. Dubbed the “Witch of Yeouido” by her peers, she embodies integrity and resilience. This becomes evident when she accepts a bribe from a financial firm aimed at swaying her court testimony regarding stock price manipulation. Instead of succumbing, she maintains her stance and exposes the collusion between her team leader and the firm’s chairman, along with the bribery attempt.

Her success in cracking the case earns her a promotion from Director Yoon Jae-beom (Kim Won-hae) to team leader. However, her male-dominated team, including her chief adversary Nam Dong-ki (Han Soo-ho), is initially resistant to her leadership. Gradually, they come to accept her, and she sets her sights on Hanmin Investment & Securities, a formidable player in South Korea’s financial sector. She receives intelligence suggesting that the chairman, Kang Pil-beom (Lee Deok-hwa), has been diverting funds into a secret account for insider trading and market manipulation.

The prosecutor handling the case demands more substantial proof. An anonymous tip promises access to the slush fund’s ledger, but during the arranged meeting, Hong is taken aback when she encounters Kang’s son, Kang Myung-hwi (Choi Won-young), the company’s CEO, linked to the source. Tragedy strikes as Myung-hwi perishes in a suspicious car crash, leaving Hong without the crucial ledger.

When the case against Chairman Kang, and his son’s death, are quietly closed, Hong’s boss Yoon suggests that Hong go undercover as a 20-year-old intern at Hanmin, working as one of the uniformed administrative assistants. While the 35-year-old Hong thinks she can pull off looking younger, she thinks the plan has a remote chance of working. But after she’s attacked and the prosecutor is sent to the hospital, she agrees to the idea.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Undercover Miss Hong has a similar feel to other Korean workplace comedies, like Pro Bono and Extraordinary Attorney Woo.

Our Take: Undercover Miss Hong is typical of a South Korean comedy, whose humor is more goofy than actually funny. There’s lots of people side-eyeing with sound-effect accompaniments, a fair amount of physical humor and a lot of yelling.

We spend a long time establishing how tough Hong is, with an extended scene where the pantsuit-wearing Won-hae sees a group of more femininely-dressed women walking down the street, including Ko Bok-hui (Ha Yoon-kyung), who turns out to be a key administrative assistant at Hanmin. We know her parents want her to quit her job and get married, given that her biological clock is ticking. We also know the only one in her corner at work is Yoon, the director.

The first 45 minutes are spent establishing all this and the case Hong is building, and we’re still not 100 percent sure what that case actually is. We’re introduced to a flurry of characters, including Kang No-ra (Choi Ji-soo), Chairman Kang’s Korean-American daughter who is basically taking the same path as Hong, even living in the same dorm for young professional women, to keep her identity secret. We’re also introduced to Albert Oh (Cho Han-gyeol), a film studies student and Chairman Kang’s grandson, whom the now-undercover Hong has a meet-cute with at a video store.

Oh, yeah, we also get to see Hong’s makeover into a 20-year-old from 1997, including the hip-hop-inspired fashions worn by her younger sister Jang-mi (Yuna) and her introduction into the dorms.

It’s a lot, and with so many characters coming and going, it’s hard to keep track. What we hope is that things settle down now that she’s undercover, in the dormitory with No-ra and Bok-hui, and trying not to have her cover blown at Hanmin. The comedy will come from this buttoned-up thirtysomething trying to act like a girly twentysomething, and the people she ends up encountering as she’s undercover, and that’s what we hope to see more of during the rest of the season.

Performance Worth Watching: Park Shin-hye does a great job showing how confident and fierce Hong Keum-bo is; she is great at her job and knows it, has no desire to “settle down,” like her parents want, and is determined to bring Chairman Kang down. But it will also be fun to see how she transforms into a younger woman and maintains that charade while she’s undercover.

Sex And Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Ko Bok-hui claims that she recognizes Hong when Hong moves into the dorm room where Bok-hui already lives.

Sleeper Star: Choi Ji-soo plays Kang No-ra, the reluctant heiress of Chairman Kang, very well. She’s bubbly but you know that there’s an undercurrent of obligation to her mother underneath that bubbliness.

Most Pilot-y Line: While some of the technologies from 1997 — StarTAC and candy-bar cell phones, Hi-8 video tape — are shown, for some reason the floppy disks are the larger, truly floppy 5 1/4″ kind and not the hard-shelled 3 1/2″ kind. Believe us when we say that any device still using the larger disks in 1997 was extremely old.

Our Call: SKIP IT. There’s too much going on in the first episode of Undercover Miss Hong, including a central case that’s hard to understand, to really latch on to anything to look forward to.

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.