K-drama A Superior Day: conventional serial killer mystery starring Jin Goo hasn’t lived up to its title yet

This article contains mild spoilers. The K-drama series Through the Darkness may have just wrapped up its run, but the grisly and tense new chiller A Superior Day is here to satisfy your serial killer itch. Based on a webcomic of the same name, this eight-part series stars Jin Goo, of Descendants of the Sun, with Ha Do-kwon (The Penthouse) and Lee Won-geun (One the Woman) as his co-stars. New episodes will air weekly. While Through the Darkness, based on the memoir of Korea’s first criminal profiler, attempted to put a more realistic spin on the genre, A Superior Day goes back to the basics. It is an old-fashioned and macabre yarn which employs a simple hook: a father tasked with tracking down a serial killer in exchange for his kidnapped daughter. Jin plays firefighter Lee Ho-chul, who we first meet when he exits an ambulance on a deserted road in the shadow of an overpass after hurtling through the city. Ho-chul spills out covered in blood and grasping an unmarked case, which he opens to reveal a handgun. He makes his way to a car park where his daughter is being held by an unknown man. He points the gun at the camera and a shot rings out. 8 new Korean drama series to look out for in March 2022 The sound of the gunshot transports us back two years. Ho-chul brings down a rifle as he tends to business outside an apartment block. Job finished, he is packing up when a noise from within the block attracts his attention. He investigates and hones in on a door, but when he tries to enter, a man steps out, slices him in the eye and escapes. His attacker is the notorious “Rich Girl Killer”, who kills and dismembers young women in their apartments and contorts their bodies into gruesome poses with matching bloody silhouettes on the walls. Ho-chul survives the attack and keeps his eyesight but is traumatised by the event. His wife, detective Choi Jung-hye (Lim Hwa-young), tries to protect him, but a reporter manages to snap a photo anyway, along with a quote that he saw the killer’s face. The action jumps forward two years to the present. Ho-chul and his family live in the Paris Ville City apartment complex; though he still isn’t back at work, he’s out and about escorting his teenage daughter Soo-a (Cho Yu-ha). A few men are circling in Soo-a’s orbit. There’s her handsome next-door neighbour art tutor, Kwon Si-woo (Lee Won-geun), and security guard Kim Dong-joo (Kim Do-hyun), who is haunted by his association with a violent event in the past. This peaceful interlude is shattered by the return of the Rich Girl Killer. A young girl in a white dress is forced to eat a plate of glass at his dinner table, and later her mangled body is found in a unit of Paris Ville City. Ho-chul’s nightmare has returned. The next day kicks off with a counter on the screen as breakfast is served – “AM 09:30:00” – and the “superior day” has begun. Ho-chul brings Soo-a to the subway station, but just before they reach the station he realises he’s forgotten something, asks Soo-a to wait there and goes to retrieve it. He returns to find her missing and, after bumping into a mysterious man, Soo-a’s phone rings in his pocket. Someone has kidnapped Ho-chul’s daughter and, if he wants her back, he needs to track down the Rich Girl Killer within the next 24 hours. K-dramas have a rage problem, but are the viewers to blame? With this simple premise, A Superior Day launches into its ticking time bomb serial- killer chase, and a cat-and-mouse game between Ho-chul and the killer begins. Surely it’s no coincidence that the killer struck again, after two years and in Ho-chul’s building, but the question is why? Si-woo is the obvious suspect, a point the show tries to make clear during his lesson with Soo-a, when he embellishes the colour of a woman’s lips on her canvas with blood from his own lips. Indebted to the sophisticated psychopath trope popularised by Hannibal Lecter and the rich tradition of Korean screen serial killers, A Superior Day sticks to a conventional dramatic framework and reserves its ingenuity for its gruesome crime scenes. Jin is adequate, if a touch milquetoast in his lead role, while Lee hasn’t yet distinguished himself from the handsome, grinning killers (suspected in this case) that populate Korean media. Though we don’t get a look at his face yet, Ha Do-kwon plays the man on the phone and, as one of the most memorable supporting actors in K-dramas over the last few years, one hopes he’ll get to do something interesting with his character. At this point, he just feels like a relative of a Rich Girl Killer victim out for revenge. Following an adequate but somewhat forgettable start, A Superior Day has yet to earn its title. A Superior Day is streaming on Viu.