A través de la oscuridad (2022)

Great acting and great script

Kim Nam Gil, Kim So-jin and Jin Seon-kyu are just amazing. They are born actors and actress. The episodes are well paced and it meticulously take us into the nitty gritty details of crime solving and the incompetency of those in the highest ranks (Who only knows how to talk and not do much and avoid responsibility and only step in when there are praises and rewards) in the police. I'm so glad they didn't put some idol actor or actress into the drama. The high ratings for the show proves that you still need great actors and actresses to carry the story and not just idol faces. Kim Nam Gil's range of facial expressions and at times solemn facial expressions truly brings out the realistic feelings of a criminal behavioural analyst.

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First: the Complaint. Then a brief review :)

I'd like to begin with a pet peeve I have about the drama: Product Placements were annoying and obvious. Movies and TV shows in the US rarely use product placement, and if they do, it's notable and not woven into the dialogue; perhaps this is why I noticed them. Complain over.

Having just finished The Fiery Priest (I'm still laughing...I loved it so much), I was eager to watch another drama with Kim Nan Gil. The actor has range because his character in Through the Darkness is nearly opposite to his character in FP. Still, the supporting cast's roles where well-drawn and execute so that the change in mindset that occurs over time in the series can be seen as genuine and not forced by a story line.

Pacing was excellent. Not interminable episodes of flashbacks, backstory, or lingering over a case for too many episodes. The result is a story that is presented over time, giving the viewer the opportunity to see the development of the Behavioral Analysis approaches and methods.

So, if you like a police series that looks at how the Behavioral Analysis unit got its start, and don't want to devote months of your life getting through it, then I recommend this for 1) bingeability 2) an interesting story but won't make you feel lost trying to figure out who did it.

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The show doesn't bring anything unique to the genre.

This series doesn’t do anything original except for the fact that most cases are resolved by just a random play of events rather than by a singular detective. The mc has this ability to feel people’s feelings at another level, but it doesn’t tangibly lead to him solving cases nor does the drama lead to anything of interest happening in the series: it’s just drama for the sake of drama. The characters in the show talk at length about what we as viewers already know and that at times becomes annoying: the same characters also give off the vibe that they are just reading the script for their parts and aren’t talking in a human like manner. It’s odd when the serial killers themselves in the show have a more natural aptitude at humanity than the police force: they are also the strongest in terms of acting and just keeping me interested in the show. When the series starts to focus on another killer who is bald, the team already has a picture of how this guy looks but for some reason people out in the streets are unable to identify him and call the police. In episode 5, a character from an old precinct where the mc worked at becomes the chief—weird part is that we haven’t seen him until now: it’s like he was just implanted into the show.

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