Following a scattershot opening, the manic and maddening Mouse , a serial killer drama from South Korean television network TVN, briefly came into focus in its third week. Yet that clarity proved to be a double-edged sword, as it only made it easier to parse the show’s weaknesses. In any case, the wobble soon returned and the wheels all but came off again as the weeks wore on. Mouse features Lee Seung-gi as patrol cop Jung Ba-reum, who teams up with the gruff and alcoholic homicide detective Go Moo-chi (Lee Hee-joon) to track down a serial killer who slaughters his victims and leaves their corpses pointing towards crosses. Last we met this mismatched duo, the serial killer had abducted a young boy and was forcing Moo-chi to stage a live broadcast on his friend Choi Hong-ju’s (Kyung Soo-jin) investigative TV report programme Sherlock PD. Episode five is devoted to this broadcast, which sees Moo-chi attempt to solve the serial killings live on air. The killer calls in but Moo-chi and Ba-reum also record a fake video of the victim, a risky ploy which they’re called out on on air. Consequently, the broadcast is abruptly interrupted, then resumed by Hong-ju after she locks out the executives from the control room. The explosive episode ends with the murderer killing Moo-chi’s priest brother live on TV. Though the logic and ethics behind the story and decision-making here are at best utterly preposterous, it’s a fun episode in which the stakes are raised and are more or less clear. Yet the same bulldozer mentality that drives this episode remains in evidence throughout the rest of the series, which becomes a lot harder to follow when events, locations and characters interact with an increasing lack of rhyme or reason. The writing aim behind Mouse has reportedly been to focus on the psychology of psychopaths. That started with geneticist Daniel Lee (Jo Jae-yun) identifying a “psychopath” gene, a diagnosis that proves correct 99 per cent of the time. By the middle of the series, our lead protagonist has two brains in his head, one (or perhaps even both) of which is trying to stimulate his desire to kill. So much for getting to the heart of what actually makes serial killers tick. Mouse: serial killer K-drama series off to a confusing start Speaking of Daniel Lee, he was killed early on in the series, but inexplicably returns midway through to secretly coach Ba-reum through his murderous schizophrenia. His strategy is to sate Ba-reum’s urges by turning him into a Dexter -like serial killer of serial killers. The lack of probing psychoanalysis aside, if the above conceit sounds fun, rest assured that it isn’t. A serial killer story relies on at least one of two major elements to succeed: an intricate investigation to find a killer, and trying to understand what drives that killer. Clearly, Mouse isn’t succeeding on the latter front with its twisty, fantastical and utterly inconsistent biogenetics, but it also fails to be an engaging murder mystery. There are many investigations throughout the show and they evolve and are generally solved very quickly but in a confounding and illogical manner. Viewers are typically going to be a step behind, but we like to try and figure out things for ourselves, and it’s all the better if we feel we were tantalisingly close to the solution when it’s eventually revealed to us. But none of the secrets in Mouse could ever be guessed at by the audience - not owing to any originality, but because the plotting is absurd and characters never behave consistently. The only thing we can figure out for ourselves is that in the world presented by this show, serial killers are a dime a dozen. At one point, in a flashback, Sung Ji-eun (Kim Jung-nan), wife of the notorious serial killer Head Hunter (Ahn Jae-wook), is accosted by the series’ serial killer while pregnant with Sung Yo-han (Kwon Hwa-yoon), who later becomes a serial killer. She is saved from a grisly fate by a mysterious young man, who will almost certainly turn out to be another person with serial killer tendencies. One of the most frustrating elements of Mouse has been its sloppiness, which is evident not only in its writing but also its staging. Case in point is the pregnant cat that Ba-reum takes home one day. We know the animal is in constant danger, and this collision of innocence and murderous impulse is mined again and again, which is lazy writing. Then the cat gives birth… to a month-old kitten. A few scenes later, the kitten – by now orphaned – is an entirely different colour. With seven episodes still remaining, it’s a little hard to fathom where the show goes from here. Young Oh Bong-yi (Park Ju-hyun) is now part of Hong-ju’s writing staff so perhaps we’ll have more cold cases for her to crack, only for Ba-reum to Dexter them before the manacles get slapped on their wrists. Meanwhile, Moo-chi and Bong-yi are getting closer to figuring out that something’s not quite right with Ba-reum, and we’re also still waiting for a definitive answer about Ba-reum’s history. Whose baby was he? Is he Jae-hoon? Do we care? Mouse is streaming on Viu in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines and Malaysia.