Excellent production values and a strong cast

Detective L is a very typical police-with-consulting-detective procedural, but one with refreshingly strong production values and a stylish 1930s Shanghai setting. Expect to see all the common tropes of the genre here, but even if it's familiar territory, it's still a lot of fun to watch. Recommended for fans of Western titles such as Murdoch Mysteries, Sherlock, or Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries.

The main cast is solid gold. Bai Yu excels in this role, which is closer to the playful Zhao Yunlan (Guardian) side of his career than more serious Xun Xu (The Wind Blows From Longxi) territory. (Guardian fans will also enjoy the fact that this series was shot at the same studio, Shanghai Chedun Film Park, and features not only several of the same actors and locations, but even some of the same props. But the budget is infinitely higher!) His Luo Fei is arrogant, pushy, and occasionally a little mean-spirited, but he's also charming, charismatic, and has good relationships with several of his colleagues (most notably the coroner, Ben Jie Ming, with whom he is shown to have a strong friendship). Una You successfully conveys "plucky, strong-minded heroine" without falling into the common traps of being annoying, overly cute, or helpless-when-plot-demands; her Xiao Man is one of the most satisfying female leads I've encountered in a C-drama, even if the script occasionally forces her into the role of slightly-baffled-Watson to Luo Fei's never-less-than-brilliant Holmes. The obligatory romance you would expect to see blossom between the leads (owing to series formula) is so slow-burn it sometimes disappears for entire episodes at a time, which is actually a pleasant change from the norm.

As a warning to squeamish viewers, there are a few (relatively) realistic autopsy scenes scattered throughout the series, as well as occasional on-camera gun violence that might be upsetting to some. There are also a fair number of corpses and wounds shown, because... well... murder.

Sadly, this is only one shorter-than-average season of shorter-than-average episodes, which means it's only about 1/3 the runtime of the typical C-drama. Which is especially disappointing (warning for very general non-specific spoilers about the structure of the series incoming) given that the ending sets up for a second season that never happened. But it's still a solid series, and if you're deathly averse to cliffhangers, you can always just skip the last three-episode arc and imagine your own resolution.

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