Review | Disney+ K-drama review: Shadow Detective – Lee Sung-min in brooding, convoluted crime drama that longs for better days
- This Disney+ series follows Lee Sung-min as grumpy and ageing detective Kim Taek-rok, who is tormented by calls from the mysterious ‘Friend’
- When he is blamed for a colleague’s death, he has to fight for his innocence, eventually helped by a young chief inspector who highlights their age difference
3.5/5 stars
“Everyone is bound to shoot themselves in the foot.” These are words that Kim Taek-rok (Lee Sung-min), the grizzled protagonist of the Disney+ crime drama Shadow Detective, keeps hearing around him.
The mystery tormentor who calls him up all the time, known only as “Friend”, speaks the words ominously, suggesting that it’s only a matter of time before his targets fall. His targets are corrupt bigwigs connected to the local police department, including Commissioner Seo Gwang-soo (Kim Hong-pa), and he has been using Taek-rok to take them down.
The words are very familiar to Taek-rok and he eventually realises why – they’re his. He wrote them down in one of his detailed journals, which provide the show with its deliciously paranoid, grave and film-noir-esque voice-over.
The sentence proves to be doubly prophetic as the “Friend” is also destined to meet his own downfall.