This article contains spoilers. If you needed to identify one character trait that all male leads in Korean drama series share, your safest bet would probably be to go with overweening confidence. That and a cocky grin, if we had to add the most common physical attribute. Do Bae-man (Ahn Bo-hyun), the more-or-less titular character of Military Prosecutor Doberman , has both the grin and the swaggering confidence to go with it. But why is it that Bae-man, along with all his male K-drama peers, can get away with showing such a supercilious attitude? Played by a Korean leading man, Bae-Man is naturally handsome and chiselled, but as a character he also needs to be extremely capable. He acts haughty since he knows better than everyone else. He’s always one step ahead of the other characters – save occasionally for his sassy female co-star – and has a preternatural ability to read people’s minds and predict their future actions. All this makes Bae-man a formidable force in a court of law. He’s always prepared and easily ferrets out sneaky ploys before his opposing counsel has even thought of them. In Military Prosecutor Doberman , Bae-man and fellow military prosecutor Cha Woo-in (Jo Bo-ah) have been trying to find a way to topple villainous division commander Noh Hwa-young (Oh Yeon-soo) all season. Military Prosecutor Doberman: K-drama action comedy has uneven start First, they went after her deplorable son Noh Tae-nam (Kim Woo-seok), but after dealing with him, they set their sights on Colonel Won Gi-chun (Lim Chul-hyung), a decorated military hero injured in the line of duty … or was he? There’s something fishy about Won’s war record and they seek to uncover what really happened when he supposedly saved a fellow soldier from a mine explosion in the demilitarised zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, injuring himself in the process. After a little digging, Bae-man thinks he’s got the colonel pegged. Outside the courtroom and in full view of a battery of reporters, Bae-man confronts the injured hero. But here, his confidence finally fails him. He claims the colonel’s amputated leg is a sham and brings a hammer down on the limb in question. He cracks the casing, revealing a steel peg. A shocked and mortified Bae-man is immediately suspended, along with Woo-in. As we soon find out, his instincts weren’t wrong. The relatively breezy action-thriller takes a twisted turn when Hwa-young coerces Won into voluntarily amputating his leg to avoid their lies being exposed. Hwa-young herself saws the limb off in the show’s grisliest scene. Despite their suspensions, the intrepid Bae-man and Woo-in continue their investigation and manage to convince a witness to testify that the colonel shot a young soldier, who remains unconscious, and tried to cover it up with his tale of heroics. Bae-man once again lets his arrogance get the better of him, as he visits the colonel and gloats about their witness, revealing who he is and all the details about their upcoming press conference. Surprise, surprise, Won and his goons abduct the witness on his way to the press conference. Woo-in, decked out in a pink wig, ultimately saves the day, the witness makes it to the presser and everything is revealed, but in the annals of self-owns this one rates pretty high. In other words, through his overconfidence Bae-man created roadblocks to their investigation twice in quick succession. While the first was a clever moment that revealed a character flaw and deepened the intrigue around the case and the main antagonist, the other was sloppy and lacked a strong motive. It was just an excuse to insert an action scene into the narrative. 8 new Korean drama series to look out for in April 2022 Rather than making Bae-man a flawed yet relatable hero, these incidents make his a frustrating character that’s hard to root for. Thank goodness for Woo-in, whose gumption is far more convincing and compelling. It’s a shame that she’s occasionally sidelined. Military Prosecutor Doberman has had its moments, but even the best of them have quickly been overshadowed by the mechanics of the series’ rote storytelling. It’s a typical tale of corruption and malfeasance that touches lightly on real-life issues, purely to save its characters from twiddling their thumbs, rather than actually engaging with anything. Hwa-young, who played a part in the death of both Bae-man’s parents and Woo-in’s mother, remains the main target, but now the show has moved on to General Hong, another member of the corrupt Patriotic Society – a distraction to keep us occupied until we return to the main villain. What’s missing from this story, with its vigilante undertones, is the brashness, fun and occasional inventiveness of other Korean drama series such as Vincenzo and Taxi Driver . It tosses action, legal drama and personal trauma against a canvas of military corruption, heightened with notes of social awareness, but most of the time it doesn’t feel like the actors’ hearts are in it. And if they’re not having fun, we’re not likely to at home either. Military Prosecutor Doberman is streaming on Viu.