Disney+ drama Because We Forget Everything: Chara plays a bar owner and Hiroshi Abe a mystery writer in 10-part Japanese series

Hiroshi Abe plays M, a mystery writer who has had a row with his girlfriend, “F”. She vanishes from a bar (Chara plays the owner) and a real-life mystery begins

There are shades of Haruki Murakami in the character of M as he turns amateur sleuth and a woman claiming to be F’s sister demands money from him

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Hiroshi Abe as M in a still from Because We Forget Everything, a 10-part Japanese mystery series on Disney+..

Published: 1:45pm, 19 Sep 2022

A struggling mystery writer finds himself at the centre of a real-life conundrum after his girlfriend goes missing, in Because We Forget Everything, a 10-part Japanese drama series from Yukiko Sode, writer-director of Aristocrats and Mime-Mime.

Hiroshi Abe, Chara, and Miki Sakai headline the cast, with new episodes premiering weekly, exclusively on Disney+.

For most of the inaugural episode events unfold at Bar Lighthouse, a cosy, unassuming Tokyo watering hole run by the eccentric Kaoru (veteran pop icon Chara).

The show’s protagonist, a journeyman wordsmith known only as “M” (Abe), is a regular of the bar, where he spends his days procrastinating over his laptop. The other barflies refer to him respectfully as “Sensei” (teacher), but are equally willing to point out that M has yet to publish anything approaching a bestseller.

From its opening moments, Sode’s show sows the seeds of suspicion in the mind of the viewer. Its very title suggests that the truth may already be clouded by lapses in memory, and the recollections of various witnesses, including the show’s purported hero, may yet prove to be far from reliable.