K-drama midseason recap: Voice 4 – crime series beginning to flag

After a promising start, Voice 4 barges forward with a hodgepodge of lacklustre investigations and a main story that is an incoherent mess of half-baked ideas

New co-lead LAPD police officer Derek Joo (Song Seung-heon) takes most of the spotlight from Kang Kwon-joo (Lee Ha-na) – and it’s a pretty poor trade-off

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Song Seung-heon in a still from Voice 4 as the series’ new co-lead character, LAPD police officer Derek Joo, who takes most of the spotlight from Kang Kwon-joo (Lee Ha-na).

Published: 5:45pm, 22 Jul 2021Updated: 1:15pm, 23 Jul 2021

This article contains spoilers.

Returning for its fourth season last month, Voice began in compelling fashion, introducing us to a gruesome new group of killers, adding the suave Song Seung-heon as a co-star, and shifting the action to South Korea’s idyllic Jeju Island.

Combined, these elements were more than enough reason for us to dive back into the unique auditory investigations of Kang Kwon-joo (Lee Ha-na) and her “Golden Time” emergency call centre team.

Sadly, after a breathless and intriguing opening, the show has barrelled forward with a hodgepodge of lacklustre investigations and a principal villain who has grown more confused and less threatening with each episode.

The best part of Voice 4’s midseason run came pretty early on in episode five, and concerned the disappearance of a local young haenyeo (the famed female divers in Jeju who scour the seabed for seafood).