Given the supercilious aura of Chairman Kwon, the Adamas seems a fitting emblem for his empire. However, Kwon’s ironclad grip on power steadily begins to slip throughout the series – since we discover that the Adamas in his possession is in fact a fake, it becomes an even more potent symbol.

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Yet beyond its intriguing symbolism, the Adamas is a frustrating prop. It’s given enormous importance in the plot, as Woo-shin’s motives for infiltrating Kwon’s compound are to retrieve it and solve his father’s murder once and for all.

The Special Investigation Headquarters (SIH), a secret government organisation seeking to take down the Haesong Group, is also after the jewelled arrow. But in both cases it isn’t quite clear how its discovery would actually support their aims.

Mystery can only get you so far, and while the Adamas could have been a symbolic MacGuffin to get us into the story, in the end the show relies on this extravagant showpiece so much that it undermines the narrative.

In keeping with Adamas’s highfalutin feel, the series’ namesake isn’t the only classical reference in the story.

Woo-shin’s bestselling novel is called Persona non grata, the Latin term that refers to someone who isn’t welcome. Fittingly Woo-shin, and his search for the Adamas, isn’t welcome in the Chairman’s home.

Adamas works best as a mystery, which means that the half of the story featuring Woo-shin skulking around the Haesong compound halls was the most compelling part of the story.

On the other hand, Soo-hyun’s investigations on the outside and eventual dealings with the SIH and Haesong’s “Team A” mercenary outfit are dominated by action and suspense. Things escalate fairly quickly and, throughout the back half of the series, explosions and firefights become increasingly common.

This includes Team A acolyte Yoon Sun (Park Hye-eun), a psychotic and cackling killer who goes around poisoning and torturing people with a maniacal glint in her eye. We learn that she is the sister of Chairman Kwon’s mute secretary Yoon Jin (Lee Si-won), who happens to be the secret lover of Kwon’s heir-to-be Hyun-jo (Seo Hyun-woo).

Yoon Sun despises her sister and shares some kind of dark backstory with her, but it’s never made clear exactly where they came from or why they enjoy such unfettered access to the most powerful corporation in the country.

Following the grand 80th anniversary celebrations of Haesong, which coincide with a terror attack against the SIH involving Soo-hyun’s ally reporter Kim Seo-hee (Lee Soo-kyung), the balance of the duelling mystery-action narratives comes to an abrupt end.

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Woo-shin leaves the complex, and with him, so do most of the show’s most appealing elements. The action quotient shoots up, queuing up a parade of tired gun battles.

We also get an extended sequence involving characters trapped in an a shipping container while people on the outside try to locate them – which is quickly becoming one of the most overused stock suspense scenes of Korean action dramas.

Secrets start to spill out when Woo-shin and Soo-hyun team up with their birth father Lee Chang-woo (Cho Seong-ha), who has escaped from prison. Trouble is, we already know, or have surmised, most of them.

As the season barrels towards its conclusion, characters begin to drop like flies, while another emerges as the true mastermind. But this flurry of activity masks the fact that many threads are left unexplored and even those that are feel rushed and unsatisfactory.

By the time the finale comes to a close, much is left unexplained. Rather than neatly offering us any resolutions, the show opts instead to end on a lazy season two cliffhanger.

Given the show’s ratings, this second season isn’t likely to materialise. What’s more, in this case the tease merely feels like a sneaky gambit for the show to sidestep the narrative problems that have been stacking up throughout its 16 episodes.

Even if it were to continue, there’s no sense of catharsis at the end of Adamas. The provenance of several characters remain opaque and their motivations are a conundrum.

The Adamas turns up again in the end, but by then this symbolic treasure has long since lost its lustre.

Adamas is streaming on Disney+.