Summary
The Victims’ Game makes for another solid entry into the odd-couple forensic thriller canon, and will occupy genre fans across its hefty eight-hour season.
This review of The Victims’ Game Season 1 is spoiler-free.
New today, Taiwanese crime drama The Victims’ Game (Netflix) makes a case for itself in the competitive market of odd-couple thrillers with a grisly eight-hour season that’ll at the very least occupy a good chunk of genre fans’ time this weekend.
In the classic tradition, the show teams up two unlikely allies – forensic scientist Fang Yi-jen (Joseph Chang Hsiao-chuan) is a copper afflicted with Asperger’s syndrome, and you’d have to ask someone a bit more qualified than me how sensitively The Victims’ Game handles that particular detail, though I suppose obsessively solving crimes is quite suited to the various quirks associated with Asperger’s, even though those same quirks make Yi-jen a bit of an outsider, and a missing daughter complicates life further.
The other half of the unlikely central partnership is accounted for by the unscrupulous investigative journalist Hsu Hai-yin (Tiffany Hsu Wei-ning). Opposites always tend to attract in such stories, and of course, these two represent each other’s best chances of both saving the day and unpacking their own personal neuroses. Familiar stuff, then, but livened up by strong production and enthusiastic brutality.
