Drama Digest:
A Taiwanese miniseries. It turns out that someone had been stalking the young girl at her apartment when she was killed. When everything collapsed, a female cop was in the middle of trying to assist the girl. Additionally, the murder and another that occurred twenty years earlier appear to be related. The supervisor of the female officer doesn’t like how she works, which makes her job much harder. Friends of the victim want to see the murderer apprehended as well. It’s done pretty well. Really decent subtitles are provided. We are constantly going into flashbacks for the different characters, which might be confusing. The show centers on a murder investigation that resembles a three-year-old cold case. The lead detective (Pinna), a rising public figure (Chuang), and a rookie police officer (Liu) are all entangled in the investigation’s murky web of power struggles.
The Feel-Good Part:
You can see love in its truest form on this show; it doesn’t depict the kind of love found in fairy tales.
The Disappointing Factor:
Trinity Of Shadows’ first episode does a decent job of establishing the individuals’ connections to both a recent murder case and an ancient one that is closely related, despite a few minor plot errors.
In-Depth Analysis:
This 15-episode HBO Asia Original series maintains a consistently realistic tone and aesthetic, and scenes depicting raids on drug-fueled parties, suspects being beaten up, and the bleak existence of a naive prostitute who is pimped by her brother-in-law while her sister forges relationships with the low-level criminal fraternity help to validate the show’s “street” vibe. The lead detective, a rising popular figure, and a rookie cop are lured into a murky web of power play after a murder that resembles a cold case from three years ago is discovered.
Star Power:
You will become familiar with three primary characters because the first episode introduces them as people whose paths will undoubtedly cross in profound, life-changing ways. Tze-Wei (played by Sandrine Pinna) is a police investigator who is first introduced to us as having a clear and unyielding approach to handling boisterous and potentially violent situations. This gives us the impression that she is a steely woman who takes her job seriously. Her warmth and caring demeanor, to the extent that she occasionally works outside of her duty hours to make sure everything is okay, belie her occasionally feisty attitude (against suspects, that is). Additionally, Stanley Yau from the Hong Kong boy band Mirror, whose character Chang Ching-yao appears to be in Taiwan for reasons other than merely attending graduate school, is given a deftly understated part.
Overall Opinion:
Trinity of Shadows’ strongest aspect is its setup, which is crucial for keeping viewers interested even though the first episode has a strong visual identity and doesn’t aim to be cinematic. The success of this series will depend on how thoroughly it explores the diverse themes, whether they be politics, crime fighting, or specific local social difficulties, and how well they are contextualized for non-Taiwanese audiences.
