Stranger
Male Lead: Cho Seung Woo
Female Lead: Bae Doona
Also Starring: Lee Joon Hyuk, Shin Hye Sun, Yoon Se Ah,Yoo Jae Myung, Lee Kyu Hyung, Moo Seong Choi
Year Released: 2017
Number of Episodes: 10
Genre: Drama
Country: Korea
Where I Watched It: Netflix
Recommended By: Bae Doona
Who I Watched It For: Bae Doona
Prosecutor Hwang Si-mok who, as a child, lost the ability to feel empathy joins a police lieutenant to try to uncover the true identity of a serial killer. While looking into the case, he must fight rampant corruption within the police department that continuously undermines the investigation. Si-mok vows to find the perpetrator within two months, but rumors about his violent nature pop up and lead to questions about his ability to lead the case. He eventually sets out to meet the person who he believes is the real murderer.
I chose to watch this drama because I saw that Bae Doona was in it. I became a fan of hers when I watched Sense 8 and wanted to see some of her other works so this worked out. This isn’t a romantic Korean drama. It’s a drama about an emotionless prosecutor who teams up with a police detective to find a serial killer. The writers of this show did a great job of bringing this everything together. The details, the characters, and the setting all played a part in making this show an interesting one. I had a couple of issues with the pacing in the beginning but I’m glad that I stuck with it because once everything came together, made sense and I got to know our main character, Hwang Si Mok better, the show really shined.
It took me a while to come to warm up to Si Mok’s character. He wasn’t a very likable person. Everything is black and white to him, there’s no room for the gray area that most everyone lives in and he’s not swayed by emotion so when things would happen around him, he didn’t react the way normal people would and I struggled with that and with him. The way that Bae Doona’s character, Han Yeo Jin was around Si Mok was exactly the way that I felt. She didn’t give up on him even though it would have been easier for her and I’m glad that she didn’t because they became a really great team that I came to like over the course of the show.
There were so many corrupt ass characters in this show that I spent a good amount of time pissed off at everyone and everything. But the more the story unfolds, the more interesting it was and the more interested I became in finding out how it all ended. So even though the pacing, in the beginning, was slow, the story picks up, the details fall in place and I was rewarded for sticking with this. Bae Doona was once again a freaking badass character that I adored and I want to keep watching her in another show and another show and another show. She’s so freaking great.
Final Rating
3.5 out of 5
