Lee Je-hoon, Lee Dong-hwi, Choi Woo-sung, Yoon Hyun-soo 10.6 per cent There’s enough money invested in , the period prequel to the beloved Korean police procedural drama (1971 to 1989), to make it look as though we have been transported back more than half a century in time. The costumes of the day are lovingly recreated, while the earthy tones of the dusty streets and the production design evoke a bygone era.
For all its production detail, however, the series relies so heavily on modern narrative tropes that it never truly feels like we have been dropped into post-Korean war Seoul. Props and fashion aside, Detective Park Yeong-han (Lee Je-hoon) and his cohorts work in a wide-open office that looks remarkably similar to the detective units of modern procedurals, among them , one of Lee’s signature dramas. The crimes they deal with are also very recognisable to a modern audience.
Aside from the cow thieves that Yeong-han apprehends in the countryside before transferring to the big city, many of his cases could have happened in any investigative series set in the present day. In one episode, four dastardly sons of high-society bigwigs form a clique in an old-fashioned hostess bar where they terrorise women, eventually killing one of them. In another, Yeong-han and his companions tackle a case of stock market manipulation.
While the episode postscript makes clear that this was inspired by real events, it is hard to imagine that any working-class citizens in 1950s Korea were .