What a view | South Korean occult drama Possessed – another classy show from the Seoul production line

A dishevelled detective who could pass for a jobless layabout and a sultry psychic who looks like she moonlights as a supermodel make an intriguing crime-busting duo in forthcoming occult thriller Possessed , from Netflix.

She thinks he’s “just a stupid thug”. He considers her excessively pampered and arrogant. So love is obviously in the ether. She inadvertently imparts some of her spirit-spotting shaman’s skills to him – leaving him gibbering at his vein-chilling visions and sleepless with fear.

Which all adds up to another classy drama from the Seoul production line, this one blending dry wit and chunks of flying flesh with the romance and the apparitions. Flesh? Indeed: blood and guts usher in the entire, 16-part debut season, adding a savage horror element to it for good measure, as a demonic serial killer (who will return to haunt proceedings after his execution) embeds an axe in his ostensibly final victim.

Song Sae-byeok is detective Kang Pil-sung and Go Joon-hee is ghost whisperer Hong Seo-jung, both of whom, it transpires, are wrestling with familial heartbreak. Bringing a genuine creepiness to the action, meanwhile, is aforementioned serial killer (Won Hyun-joon as the ruthless, blade-brandishing Hwang Dae-du), to whose fiendish crusade death was never going to be any impediment.

If possession is nine-tenths of spirit-world law then the clownish police department to which Kang belongs will have an almost impossible time keeping the city safe from a manic murderer who doesn’t, technically, exist.

Spirits in the material world are never a happy fit; and malevolent ghosts in the machine tend to throw axes, knives and spanners in the works. Moreover, this unusually diabolical entity seems to have a specific, depraved agenda. So, psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est?