Sketch

Sketch

6/10

Sketch

Genre:                                                     Episodes: 16                                  Year: 2018

Mystery

Action

Synopsis:

Yoo Shi Hyun is a police officer who sketches future crime scenes. After a sketch depicting a murder scene comes true, Detective Kang Dong Soo joins Shi Hyun’s team in order to find the murderer.

Cast:

Rain (Kang Dong Soo)

Lee Sun Bin (Yoo Shi Hyun)

Lee Dong Gun (Kim Do Jin)

Jung Jin Young (Jang Tae Joon)

Lee Seung Joo (Yoo Shi Joon)

Lim Hwa Young (Oh Young Shim)

Kang Shin Il (Moon Jae Hyun)

Yoo Da In (Min Ji Soo)

General Thoughts:

When I first realised this drama had come out, I was a little confused as to why I had heard literally nothing about it. The premise sounded quite cool (even if we have had some similar ideas recently with ‘While You Were Sleeping’ and ‘Black’) and it had Korea’s Darling Rain returning since getting married and having a baby.

Guess who's back

So why was this drama so quietly received? Honestly speaking, probably due to the fact that it wasn’t very good. It wasn’t bad either, so there was nothing to loudly complain about. It was just very simply mediocre. Which is fine I guess- not all dramas can be great hits. I just kind of feel like 2018 was swimming in mediocre dramas. The plot is where I really felt this drama was letting itself down.

I thought this show would be more exciting than it was

While I didn’t necessarily think the writer was bad (there were some beautiful emotional beats sprinkled throughout the show) the plot just meandered along, and our characters didn’t actually end up doing all that much. It’s almost like the show couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a tense cat-and-mouse chase or a fast paced action-thriller, and in the end it didn’t end up being either. Instead we just had two groups of people fighting each other, even though they were actually trying to work towards the same goal. The acting held up pretty well all drama long, with Rain delivering a delightful, slightly rough detective for our hero. I enjoyed that Dong Soo wasn’t written the way most K-Drama detectives are. Usually our good detectives are rough around the edges but have a strong moral compass, and their belief in justice is that jail is the ultimate and most appropriate punishment for criminals. Dong Soo was set apart from those usual characters, as rather than aiming to catch Da In’s killer to bring him to lawful justice, Dong Soo wanted to catch him so that he could kill him. A different kind of justice. It was an interesting character quirk that Dong Soo was so honest and upfront about his goal, and not only set him apart from other characters, but also served to develop his relationship with Da In, as the two actually had very little time together on-screen.

Are there any detectives in K-Dramaland who haven't had a family member murdered?

Sure, Dong Soo eventually came around to the idea that murdering a murderer isn’t as great as he initially thought and settled for the legal system’s justice, but I appreciated that this was an aspect of his character that was explored. I tend to prefer Rain in comedic roles (who am I kidding, that’s all I’ve actually seen him in), but I thought he did an excellent job at handling the darker emotions that this drama called for.

Lee Dong Gun as a morally ambiguous killer? Yes, please, and thank you

Perhaps now that he has a family of his own, Rain was able to tap into something more raw and emotional when it came to acting out his fiancé’s murder- whatever it was, Dong Soo’s devastation and grief was expressed perfectly, and really drew you into Dong Soo as a character. On the other side of Rain we had Lee Dong Gun, playing the man who murdered Dong Soo’s fiancé. I absolutely adored Lee Dong Gun in ‘7 Day Queen’ where he made my heart bleed a thousand times over, so I was pretty excited when I saw he’d be playing another morally dubious, utterly broken character here. While his character, Do Jin, wasn’t written nearly as well as his character in ‘7 Day Queen’, Lee Dong Gun brought that same victim-turned-assailant vibe and really tugged at your heartstrings. While the mechanics of how Do Jin was wooed over onto Team Killer were a bit hazy (and honestly pretty weak), if you bypassed that and focused solely on Do Jin as a character and Lee Dong Gun’s strong portrayal, he was a villain you couldn’t help but love. The crux of Lee Dong Gun’s performance was definitely his death scene, and despite feeling a little detached from the story at that time, I can tell you that the moment in his dream when he was finally reunited with his wife was so bittersweet and really broke my heart.

Cue the tears

Lee Sun Bin was our heroine, and while she didn’t have a whole lot to work with, she did a pretty good job at being the main driving force of the thinking side of the plot (the two boys had the emotional side pretty darn covered). It’s a shame that Shi Hyun wasn’t given a bit more development, as I really felt that Lee Sun Bin had a lot left in her tank that she could have shown us- the drama just wasn’t asking for it.

Quietly manipulative

Lee Seung Joo was a nice surprise- he’s got a teeny tiny list of credits (none of which I’ve seen), but was able to portray the double-crossing prosecutor well. Similar to Lee Dong Gun’s character, the reasoning behind Shi Joon’s willingness to kill innocent people to achieve his goal wasn't totally explained, nor was his connection with Tae Joon, but if you ignored that and focused only on the character and the actor, it was okay. Lee Seung Joo did a great job at showing us exactly what Shi Joon was thinking, and his gradual slip from kind, refined prosecutor to slightly crazy ‘world-changer’ was done well, with a gradual progression from his mask to his real face. While most of the supporting cast and extras did reasonably well, I will say that some of the extras early on (like the first man Shi Hyun saves from jumping off a boat) weren’t acted all that well, and crummy acting from an extra can snap you right out of a moment. Production-wise, this drama did pretty well. Despite the subject matter not actually being all that mysterious or dark (because everything was moving so slowly), the lighting, music and camerawork all worked really hard at bringing a tense, charged atmosphere to the screen. 

What Was Great:

Fights:

While I will say that the sheer amount of fights between Dong Soo and Do Jin were probably excessive (they met every two or three episodes and fought with each other), the fights themselves were pretty cool. The last few dramas I’ve watched that have incorporated an action element fell a bit flat, with fights feeling poorly choreographed, or poorly filmed. The fights in ‘Sketch’ were neither of those things. They were choreographed to look cool and dangerous, and the moves were of a level that you believed that Do Jin was a member of special forces, and not just a thug who threw a lot of punches.

It's been a while since I've seen such good action in a K-Drama

There were some really great moves that went beyond simple punches and kicks, and it was really exciting to watch. And the filming- bless whoever filmed those fight scenes. I could actually see what was gong on! Rather than having shaky, quick movements to enhance the ‘intensity’ of the moment, the camerawork was smooth and stable, opting for extended single shots rather than rapid-change shots. Sure, this makes it harder to choreograph and execute the fight (leaves much more room for error) but when done well, as it was here, the result is a really thrilling fight scene. 

Fun Premise:

I’m always into fantasy elements, and think that mystery-thrillers/police dramas are a great genre to incorporate a bit of fantasy.

Like, I love fantasy

Having the heroine sketching future crime scenes was an interesting premise and one I was keen to see play out. It added a lot of room for moral dilemmas (are you a criminal if you haven’t committed a crime yet?), and there was a lot that could be mined from this fantasy addition.  

What Wasn’t:

No Idea Exploration:

So while the premise was fun and set up a lot of room for interest, the show did not take advantage of this. The only thing the sketches were really used for was to get Do Jin and Dong Soo into contact with each other, and be a way for the police team to find Do Jin and The Elder. Which is pretty disappointing.

Kinda wish you guys were better at your jobs

To start with, in all 16 episodes I think the group was only able to change Shi Hyun’s sketches once? Twice, maybe? Which kind of renders them useless, at least in a crime-prevention sense, which is what the team was trying to use them for. The sketches more or less ended up being self-fulfilling prophecy, with the team going out of their way to try and prevent them from happening, only to have their attempts at prevention actually trigger events that lead to the sketch coming true. Which was a little frustrating to watch as a viewer. Then there was the fact that Shi Hyun and Chief Moon kept saying that the sketches were never wrong- so why are you trying so hard to change them if they’re never wrong?There was a bit of confusion around how and why this group had been formed to save people/prevent crimes, if Shi Hyun’s sketches were always correct. Then there was the introduction of Shi Joon as another person who could see the future- only his power came in actual visions rather than abstract sketches- much more useful in my opinion. The idea was brought up that Shi Hyun and Shi Joon’s powers were somehow related, and Shi Joon was the only one who had the power to change Shi Hyun’s sketches.

Why can Shi Joon change the sketches but Shi Hyun can't? We'll never know...

But then out of nowhere Shi Hyun’s power was growing (the how and why of this are never explained) and then suddenly Shi Hyun is ‘stronger’ than Shi Joon. Yeah, I dunno what that was about either. It also kind of annoyed me that as soon as the possibility of another person with similar powers was brought up, no one even considered Shi Joon.

Shi Joon has been playing these police like a fiddle

Like, yes, I understand that it’s because he’s Shi Hyun’s brother and they would all assume they would know if he could see the future, but as Shi Hyun is the only other person with this sort of ability, I thought they would at least entertain the idea that it was a genetic thing. But no. The police group as a whole were kind of stupid, if I’m being brutally honest (which I always am). The show worked to keep the viewers in the loop of what was going on with Shi Hyun and Shi Joon’s teams, but the problem with having the audience in the know is that it makes the good guys look like morons when it takes them so long to figure things out- because the audience already has the answer it’s easy to see what all the little clues are adding up to. Yet it ends up taking a whole episode or more for the police to get there. I wish that Shi Hyun’s sketches were used more as an actual element and topic of discussion for the moral issues they presented, or simply that they were actually more useful, rather than only having them as a plot device that did nothing more than slowly try and push the plot along.

Recommend?

No, despite the fantasy element, there are better mystery police dramas out there.

Not terrible, not great