Cafe Minamdang: Lively shaman-themed drama series starring Seo In-guk and Oh Yeon-seo is hit and miss, Entertainment News
Doom at Your Company actor Web optimization In-guk and Oh Yeon-search engine optimization of Mad for Just about every Other face off in the new shaman-themed series Cafe Minamdang.
Airing on KBS2 and streaming internationally on Netflix, the exhibit is centered on Jung Je-han’s novel The Minamdang Situation Notebook.
Seo and Oh play a cocky shaman and a hard detective respectively.
Their people are identified as the “Marvel of Yonghae-dong” and the “Ghost of Yongjin Station”, which need to give you an thought of the more than-the-major tone this vivid and peppy comedy-mystery-thriller is aiming for.
The exhibit commences substantial above a gleaming city skyline, as illustrious candidates sit before an scary panel of interviewers for the article of general supervisor at MK Hotel, a swanky skyscraper that oozes social privilege.
The applicants all have sterling references and resumes, but every in convert has their overweening self confidence dashed when the guide interviewer throws them curveball inquiries.
Still these did not materialise out of nowhere. They’re becoming fed into her ear by the dapper and cocky Nam Han-jun (Search engine optimisation), who reads their faces and exposes their kleptomania, nepotism or abusive managerial types.
How is it that he can so easily ferret out these miscreants? Han-jun is a well known shaman, recognized for his flashy satisfies and variegated fans, which he often breaks out in general public when he exposes charlatans.
But the fact is that Han-jun also has a person in his ear, the purple-haired hacker Nam Hye-jun (Kang Mi-na), who feeds him grime on the people today he sets his sights on.
Han-jun is renowned as a excellent shaman, but in actuality he is a fraud.
He operates the titular Cafe Minamdang along with his co-conspirators Hye-jun, Kong Su-chol (Kwak Si-yang) and Jo Na-dan (Baek Search engine marketing-hoo), a workforce of younger investigators who help him sustain his masquerade as an all-recognizing shaman.
The users of this group share a diploma of chemistry, but their cheerful antics are inclined to be expressed via blunt pantomime. Foolish walks and broad guffaws abound when comic timing is in short offer.
The shaman enterprise is a critical just one in South Korea, exactly where major politicians, stars, business enterprise operators and just about absolutely everyone else in culture are regarded to regular them.
Cafe Minamdang doesn’t have on the pretence of Han-jun remaining a genuine shaman for lengthy, but it won’t concern the legitimacy of shamanism both.
During the investigation of an adultery circumstance related to a single of Han-jun’s clients, detective Jang Du-jin (Jung Gentleman-sik) encounters a person of the shaman’s prophecies.
When his young sidekick Kim Sang-hyeob (Heo Jae-ho) disregards it, Du-jin cautions him and points out the eerie capabilities of the Wonder of Yonghae-dong.
Absolutely sure enough, Han-jun is proved accurate.
Back again at the precinct, Du-jin checks his fortune for the day in the newspaper, which warms him to check out out for the colour black coming from the East.
No quicker does he end the sentence than Han Jae-hui (Oh) comes, going for walks in sluggish motion from a side corridor in a flowing black leather-based trench coat.
Du-jin problems Jae-hui for a new recruit at initially, but all through a bust at the docks she shows off her incredible pace and battling prowess. Her co-workers inevitably figure out that she’s in fact their new crew chief.
Han-jun and Jae-hui cross paths when he reviews a hit-and-run accident and she investigates the scene. Complicating issues is the simple fact that the assailant in the hit-and-operate is the odious company executive Shin Gyeong-ho (Kim Received-sik), who is truly Han-jun’s consumer.
As the case develops, Jae-hui speedily arrives to despise Han-jun and his predatory means, but one more case brewing in the history also connects them.
In her time off, Jae-hui pursues a own vendetta which has one thing to do with her brother and also requires Han-jun.
The components of Cafe Minamdang is a common one and the exhibit won’t have to have to function quite challenging to set up the romance involving the two leads.
Han-jun is a normal cocky male with a seemingly amoral mindset, while Jae-hui is the lady whose tricky disposition is partly connected to the traumatic heritage the characters share and that she may well not don’t forget. A current K-drama series utilizing the very same system is Kiss Sixth Perception.
About time we can expect two items: Jae-hui will piece anything collectively, and Han-jun will display himself to be a ethical character. Exactly where Cafe Minamdang stands out is in its other specifics.
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The exaggerated tone of the exhibit offers it a amount of incredibly vibrant people, these types of as Cha Do-received (Kwon Soo-hyun), a district attorney nicknamed “chatterbox prosecutor” for his skill to split down criminals by chattering absent to them right up until their ears bleed, and detective Du-jin, affably performed by the terrific character actor Jung Gentleman-sik.
Also in services of the show’s tone is its energetic soundtrack, which includes a bouncy opening credits theme by the great pansori pop band Leenalchi, whose new music also seems in Pachinko.
Over-all the exhibit has a lot more misses than hits, but a tighter tale likely ahead could reverse that.
Cafe Minamdang is streaming on Netflix.
This short article was initial printed in South China Morning Post.