Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
Starring: Jeon Do-yeon (and her hair), Kim Go-eun, Park Hae-soo, Jin Seon-kyu, Choi Young-joon, Lee Sang-hee
Where to watch: Netflix
To watch or not to watch: A definite step-up for regular Korean dramas as it makes women take the centre stage, but the thrills are chill

Artist couple Ahn Yoon-soo and Ki-dae live happily with their daughter in South Korea. One day, when Yoon-soo goes to visit her husband in his studio, she finds him brutally murdered. All the evidence the police finds point to Yoon-so being the murderer and she is sent to jail, where she meets Mo-eun, who is labelled as a psychopath because of the brutal way she murdered a dentist couple in their home by poisoning them and watch them die for half an hour. Mo-eun makes a deal with Yoon-soo – Mo-eun will confess to the murder of the husband if Yoon-soo will kill the son of the dentist couple. Since the situation is dire, and Yoon-soo is worried about her daughter on the outside, she agrees to the deal, even though she is doubtful of her ability to commit the crime. The son is killed nonetheless, throwing the entire plan out the window and leading to more doubt about the truth about Ki-dae’s death.

There are few instances where the women are given the centre-stage in the visual storytelling medium specially coming from South East Asia, and this is one of the rare instances. And they do it well, without constantly telling the viewers what great people they are in doing so. The setting of the series is grim and the plot is intriguing enough to keep the intrigue. The real showstopper though is Kim Go-eun who shines in this series, the same way she shone in Exhuma. She is an incredible actor and the world needs to take note of her prowess.
This series despite having a great plot, has the same storytelling method where they either run the same doubt multiple times (like the stranger Yoon-soo sees exiting her husband’s studio right before she found him murdered) or they doubt everyone character involved in the story (the stranger is every female Yoon-soo knows). This is a cheap ploy to fill the total runtime and to mislead the viewer. And the series is of course overly dramatised, as is unfortunate fate of most content these days. Overall the series is decent, not too great.

The day we stop treating the stars differently, or create an aura of reverence around them in any visual content, that will the day we will take a huge step towards creating good content. For example, the lead Jeon Do-yeon is a famous actor in Korea and she would have achieved this merit through years of hard work and constantly honing her craft. She has her hair in a certain throughout the runtime of the series, even when she was in solitary captivity in the jail for an extended period of time. That took away from the portrayal of reality in the series. When compared with Kim Go-eun with her buzz cut hair and absolutely perfect acting, the overall genre of the series moves towards the line between serious and popcorn.
Anyway, you wouldn’t need popcorn to watch this series. It is ok. Meh.