This drama simply played with my head for sixteen episodes straight. From the very first episode, which was one of most impressive pilot I’ve seen in a while. Everything was top notch. Good action, constant tension, interesting characters and amazing pace, I was basically at the edge of the seat, not even completely knowing what’s going on.

Because viewer is very slowly eased into what’s going on. For most of the time, we’re not entirely sure what’s about to happen. And it’s because of two things. First of all, characters are absolutely unpredictable. We don’t really know much about them aside of what’s happening. There’s very little voiceovers and close to none exposition, so we don’t know what they’re thinking and what they’re planning next. For most of the time, they’re wild cards, especially main character. We don’t really know who’s on who’s side, are they ally or and enemy. Even when Si Mok assembles task team, we hope that he’ll finally find someone to trust, but soon we figure out that the team is mostly made up of his enemies or people who work for them.The other reason is that events are not really explained. Once again we know exactly the same as our characters and sometimes even less than that. For like 90% of the time we don’t really know what the characters are up to. This all adds up to very interesting murder mystery/ thriller story. But you need to follow is carefully not to get lost.

Let’s talk about main character, because Hwang Si Mok (in this role absolutely fantastic Cho Seung Woo) is a type of the guy who is hard to like, but you’ll absolutely learn to love.
Again, we don’t know much about him, some random facts, some glimpse about his private life, mostly rumours circling around. His biggest trait: he lacks emotions, completely. And because of that for most of the time we have no idea what goes through his head. Is he honest or is he just bluffing? Plus, he really doesn’t have anyone on his side, which he openly admits. He’s not liked in his work environment and gossips that surround him just pour more fuel on the fire. This drama is the reason I have trust issues because at one point I has questioning everything and I even starting suspect Si Mok of committing murder.

We have main plot line that revolves around murder of a person, who as it turns out had a history of bribing highly situated people, including some prosecutors. Obviously a lot of people wouldn’t mind his death, so there’s a lot of suspects and very few proofs. And the thing is that no character is really black or white. No-one is completely good or absolutely bad. All characters are somewhere is between moving closer towards one of the sides. And then there’s Si Mok, without emotions operating in absolutes. You did something bad, you’re not a good person, you need to be punished. His judgement is absolutely objective, there’s no place for personal input.
And because everyone seem to be guilty of something, finding out about another crimes stops being a surprise, really. More often it’s a question of what rather than if.

Characters are absolutely fascinating here and I’m not only talking about the main ones. It seems that everyone has a unique story or some secret that we don’t know about.

About the plot, there’s obviously main murder theme that is somewhere in the middle of the action, but what we really focus on is politic play that surrounds main characters. So before we get to the solution of the main case we get though so many issues that sometimes this murder seems almost secondary. Especially that we cannot be sure of anything. Even if the case looks like it’s solved there’s always possibility of something happening. Even when somebody admits to committing the crime we still cannot be sure that he really did it.

The pace of the show is rather steady. It’s a suspenseful thriller, not action packed drama.

I have to admit, I’ve started watching is for Cho Seung Woo, after his performance in Sisyphus, but I’ve absolutely stayed for how amazing this drama is. All characters are masterfully played (kudos to Bae Doo Na and Yoo Jae Myung among many others) but let’s be honest, from this cast we could only expect the all the best.

Plus there’s one good thing about this drama, it has a second season!