What a view | Netflix murder mystery series Light the Night, set in Taipei’s red-light area, cranks up the tension; Swagger tells NBA star Kevin Durant’s story

Ah, the 80s. What a decade. Big-hair rock bands, flares and nobody texting, sexting, trolling, swiping, liking, friending, trending, blocking, yakking or chirping.

In Light the Night (Netflix, now streaming) we’re in late-1980s Taipei, mostly the red-light district, where a group of hostesses run the high-end Light bar, popular with free-spending Japanese businessmen.

Joint mama-sans are Ruby Lin as Lo Yu-nung (bar name “Rose”) and Cheryl Yang as Su Ching-yi (“Sue”), who are best friends but certain to come to emotional and perhaps physical fisticuffs on the subject of slippery, manipulative screenwriter Chiang Han (Rhydian Vaughan), who manoeuvres between the two while also giving the glad eye to actresses taking his fancy.

Among the Light staff are Wang Ai-lien (“Aiko”, played by Puff Kuo), a student paying for college; Huang Pai-he (“Yuri”; Nikki Hsieh Hsin-ying), who is sucked into the triad drugs trade; and embittered Chi Man-ju (“Ah-chi”; Cherry Hsieh), a lottery junkie indebted to loan sharks.

Skipping around chronologically lets in the murder-mystery element. After a woman’s body is found in the Taipei mountains, we follow the circumstances leading to the discovery – peppered with romantic rivalries, bitchiness, betrayal, gold digging and back stabbing. And in their cynical business, as customers are fleeced for fixed smiles and increasingly expensive alcohol, few can blame the women when one declares: “Men are nothing. Only money won’t betray us.”

As the backstories and personal problems of the women emerge, the name of the murder victim is withheld and the dramatic tension escalates. But fear not: you have 24 first-series episodes to work out her identity.