Lockdown 2.0 has us all confined to places we probably don’t want to be, at least for some of the time. Netflix has provided a plethora of stuff to watch, not least of all the stellar Kingdom (킹덤), the Korean imperial zombie horror / thriller that was a solid 9/10 for me. Great ideas, plot twists and proper full-on zombies, the whole two seasons were a blast that I couldn’t stop watching.
On the back of that Netflix recommended another Korean drama to me; Stranger (비밀의 숲) from 2017. Full of award-winning power houses from South Korea’s acting best of the best, and written by someone who enjoys torturing viewers with proper mysteries, I was hooked by the end of the first episode. The characters are new to me, fun to guess at, brilliant to get to know. The budget, the production, the whole thing is a different flavour of thriller than the sometimes plodding or predictable American and British fare that I’m used to. It differs again from the Hong Kong dramas of the day, and even from the Taiwan crime dramas I’ve seen.
You know that old adage, “you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all”? I feel like that with a lot of American stuff; there’s only so many times you can watch the straight white dude win in the end just because he’s the ‘good guy’. I needed something different, and Kingdom was my second foray into Korean drama. (Full disclosure; my first was Suspicious Partners [수상한 파트너], which was all love story all the time and that’s not my thing. I gave up on it after a few episodes.) It turned out to be a gateway to twisty-turny mysteries, where they don’t waste time building up to something only to find that there’s one mild twist at the end. Instead you get logical paths answered in one or two episodes instead of five or six, and then you get a twist that sets you off on a different path. It’s fun, it’s new - and while everyone in South Korea or the rest of the K-drama world will think this particular series is nothing new, it’s new to me, and I’m having fun discovering a whole new genre.
Kingdom was my primer. Stranger has been, for me, the ultimate game of Cluedo - after you determine what the root crime is about that kicks off everything to follow. It’s clever, it’s full-on, it’s fascinating. We have political intrigue where people are trying to one-up each other, jockeying for positions they covet in police and prosecutors’ offices. We have personal dilemmas, where employees have to think very carefully about what they are doing by opening up cans of worms. We have chains of events kept in motion by people unknown, until it all finally comes out. Strap yourselves in for a long, slow burn of many twists and satisfying discoveries: keeping all these plates in the air at all times is the amazing cast of characters.
It would be remiss of me not to mention how big the stars are behind this series. While they are heavyweights in the movie world they also appear in TV dramas, mostly to keep themselves paid, like every actor. We have big names here, totally unknown to me except that they bring so much life to the characters I found myself picking favourites within the first ten minutes of air time. The way the characters come over, bit by bit, layer by layer, revealed only by their interactions with everyone else serving their own ulterior motives, kept me glued to the subtitles. So who are these people?
We are presented with two main characters, who I attached to very quickly. The first is Lieutenant Han Yeo-Jin, a police officer with the tenacity of a ratting terrier but the heart of someone who knows what it’s like to be on the outside due to the cruelty of others outside your control. Played with brilliant flair by Bae Doona, she is a stark contrast to the prosecutors we meet. Her police colleagues are half with her and half against, not really understanding her. Her one true friend, Jang Geon, is a great detective but needs her guidance in navigating the structure of the police force. She doesn’t seem to care for all that on the surface, although she sees it going on. She dresses in brighter colours than everyone else, she draws little cartoons of people or things she thinks about, she is lively, animated, fun and probably too much sunshine for her colleagues on some days.
Her counterpart in being devoted to truth and tracking it down works in the prosecutor’s office, not historically a place where alliances with police are welcome. Prosecutor Hwang Si-Mok is diligent, effective, sharp as a knife and equally as dangerous as he refuses to take part in office politics, agendas or camps. Partly the reason for this, and the wrinkle that keeps this whole drama ticking toward its conclusion to well, is the surgery he had to go through as a teen. A problem with some part of his brain caused incalculable pain as he got older, something to do with loud noises or certain frequencies (I guess like a severe attack of super-concentrated tinnitus). In order for him to live something like a normal life, he undergoes a partial lobotomy. This causes him to lose empathy and other most emotions. He is now a model prosecutor, just as intended - he has no sentiment, no pesky emotions getting in the way of his duty to finding the truth and bringing it to court with winning cases. He appears dour, uninterested in small talk or social niceties other than what protocol demands, and is totally aloof from life in general. He should be a boring character - but a wonderful portrayal by Cho Seung-Woo makes him fascinating to watch, where every micro-expression carries more weight than anyone else’s emotion.
Enter Lieutenant Han. Over the next 16 episodes she will bully Hwang into acknowledging that he has sporadic attacks and it’s physically painful enough to render him unconscious. She will bully him into accepting her little sketches of him, of how his brain should be slowly filling back up with emotional control since the surgery, how there is hope of him not turning out totally alone for the rest of his life. And she does all this by smiling at him, speaking to him like a human being, treating him carefully rather than being harsh with him and using the clenched jaws and dirty scowls the men in his office direct at him for being different.
Between them they will uncover everything that’s going down, sharing things on the quiet, working out theories and reasons and motives over ramen, text messages, shared looks. By the time we get to the conclusion, their very quiet, understated teamwork will be legend. And for good reason - they are a force to be reckoned with, one with the determination to see it through because you uncover the truth to prevent further harm, to stop people being hurt, and the other determined to get to the truth because it’s the right thing to do and who cares about privilege and people thinking they can get away with anything because they’re your senior?
I’m not going to lie, this was epic for me. Two people getting to the resolution through different means and being Team Awesome despite everyone’s complete disdain and disapproval? Totally platonic BFFs who don’t even know they’re BFFs, taking down anyone who’s connected to the whole sordid case? I’m in.
And let’s not forget the supporting cast - we have magnificent cockroach Seo Dong-Jae, who is doing his best to kiss the right arse at the right time in order to secure promotion. He is a focal point and so important to everything that goes down, and I enjoy watching him attempting to insert himself into the lives of strategically important people. The way he gets himself into scrapes and then manages to get out again by falling into a bigger one is epic and is a fascinating juxtaposition to what everyone else is up to. He could not be any more opposite to Hwang Si-Mok in every way; he’s loud, he’s brash, he’s immaculately dressed and perfectly coiffed at all times. He’s confident in his ability to come out on top at everything… until he doesn’t. Lee Joon-Hyuk is so good in this role it’s like he was born for it.
With season one done, I had to find more stuff to occupy me - and then it turns out there’s a season two.
Ok, if I thought season one was good with the plot twists and the fun friends shenanigans, then ai-yah I was naïve. Season two is like season one on steroids. Honestly, it’s great stuff and it covers so much more than season one. The writer has said that she has enough for five seasons, and I for one hope that’s a promise. Season two gave us separation, personal discovery, deep dives into office politics and best of all, the most epic Hwang/Han shipping we could ask for. Still Team Awesome once they hit their stride, him letting her help in times of dire vulnerability when he spends his life covering it up, him going over everyone’s heads to step in for her without her knowledge but only when she needed it - everything I could have asked for, and especially as it’s without all that boring romance shit.
The final scene made me grin uncontrollably at the way certain characters were coming to terms with things, and although it ended in a frustrating way, I have heard there may be a season three some time in the next two years.
Just about time for me to move onto new dramas, miss these two seasons, and then go back and watch them all again.
Perfect.
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