All that, plus a cast including Game of Thrones’ Natalie Dormer, Lucifer’s Tom Ellis, Agents of SHIELD’s Iain De Caestecker and Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya. It’s scary, funny, well-plotted and packed with geek pop culture references. Over a decade ago, Thorne created The Fades, the story of a teenage boy who becomes entangled in a celestial battle between the living, the dead, and everybody in between. The Fades was created by Jack Thorne, a playwright and screenwriter who cut his teeth on Skins, collaborated multiple times with Shane Meadows on his sterling This Is England series, and recently headed up the writing team on BBC/HBO fantasy His Dark Materials (another decent recommendation that would sit nicely in this list, come to mention it). The creature VFX of this 2011 supernatural drama on a BBC budget might not quite stand up to those of Hellbound, but the quality of the writing, direction and cast more than make up for that. Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video/Hulu (US) BBC iPlayer (UK) Hellbound Ending Explained By Kayti Burt The Fades If you’re a fan of Hellbound and other Yeon works, then check out The Cursed, which also has a spinoff movie.
Like Hellbound and much of Yeon’s other work, The Cursed is a genre tale through and through, telling the story of a teen girl who has the ability to curse people to death (I thought all teen girls could do this, but whatever) and a social issues journalist fighting against an evil IT conglomerate (relatable).
But perhaps you haven’t yet watched The Cursed, Yeon’s first TV drama, which aired in Korea in 2020.
If you were anticipating the release of Hellbound, then you are probably already a fan of Yeon Sangho and have watched his Train to Busan film series and/or his 2011 animated feature The King of Pigs (which features some voice acting from Hellbound’s Yang Ikjune, aka Detective Jin). Where to watch: Honestly, this is not easy to find outside of Korea
Featuring gorgeous footage of the Korean wilderness and more murder plots than a CBS procedural, Jirisan will simultaneously make you want to hike Mount Jiri and never set foot on the mountain ever in your life. From Kim Eunhee, the creator of much-celebrated zombie period series Kingdom, Jirisan is a drama that doesn’t need a genre element to be dramatic, but goes for it anyway in the form of co-protagonist Kang Hyun-jo, a ranger who sees visions of people trapped or dying on the mountain. If you like the plot-driven supernatural elements of Hellbound, then try Jirisan, a currently airing K-drama about a group of mountain rangers who work around and on mainland Korea’s highest peak, Mount Jiri. In both cases, this involves the formation of cults that use their sudden, growing influence to accumulate power and hurt people under the guise of righteousness. Both Hellbound and The Leftovers, however, are more interested in studying how people and society might react to such reality-shaking events-how we all might try to make meaning from this new information. Lesser shows-or at least more plot-driven shows-would focus on explaining the supernatural phenomena that start it all. In The Leftovers, it is the sudden disappearance of 2% of the world’s population. In Hellbound, it is the realization that creatures that seem a lot like angels and demons exist and are coming to kill people. Like Hellbound, The Leftovers is an existential drama that starts with an incomprehensible, potentially divine metaphysical event. Prepare yourself for heaven-and-hell dramas, existential questions, terrifying monsters, human dilemmas, angels, demons and much, much more. If you’ve already binged all six episodes of the ultra-violent celestial fantasy and are thirsting for more shows in a similar vein, then we’ve hand-picked a selection of supernatural fantasy series that could make the perfect follow-up. Netflix Top Ten, and to top Netflix’s global (self-reported) charts. Hellboundis the most recent Korean-language hit to make it into the U.S.