Amazon-owned Prime Video has launched “The Killing Vote,” a hardboiled crime drama series from Korea.
The 12-part show uses the premise that a text message is sent to ordinary citizens who get to vote for or against the application of the death penalty in individual criminal cases. If more than 50% vote in favor, the criminal is killed by a mysterious character called Dog Mask.
That in turn creates difficult choices for police officers. They may have differing views on whether such rough justice is justified or not and are also tasked with tracking down Dog Mask.
The show stars Park Hae-jin as a detective character who is immediately caught in the dilemma, but with career advancement his priority, his position may be swayed over time.
Park Sung-woong portrays a legal scholar whose views are also ambiguous, but who turned himself in and finds himself in prison after killing the rapist who attacked his daughter. Lim Ji-yeon portrays a lieutenant in the Police cyber security bureau and who was once seen as a high-flyer, but who has come to be seen as a nuisance by her colleagues, due to her inability to avoid speaking out.
Directed by Park Shin-woo and written by Jo Yoon-young, the show is adapted from a popular webtoon “National Death Penalty Vote” by Uhm Se-yoon and Jung Yi-pum, that was published on Kakao Webtoon and KakaoPage. Production is by Pan Entertainment Studios.
The show launched its first episode on Korea’s SBS on Thursday. Both SBS and Prime Video will upload subsequent episodes every Thursday at 9pm Korean time.
Local Korean media report that the companies’ initial plan was to make two episodes available at launch. But this was scuppered by a side effect of the recent typhoon, in which a real-world emergency news broadcast on SBS took precedence.