OCN’s crime thriller Children of a Lesser God caught my eye with its casting, since I’m a fan of both leads: Kang Ji-hwan, although his recent dramas haven’t done much for me (Monster, Big Man), and Kim Ok-bin, though I find her more compelling in films than dramas (The Villainess, Yoo-na’s Street, Sword and Flower).
The drama is a crime thriller that features two police detectives as our leads, but it’s not a straight crime procedural; there’s also an eerie supernatural vibe, which are carried over into the drama’s posters, teasers, and promo stills. Both posters tell us that “When the bell rings, the truth is revealed,” and provides the key to our heroine’s connection to crime scenes. Shudders. I find OCN crime dramas to be quite dark and gritty as they are, without adding in a paranormal element!
Children of a Lesser God pairs its two leads as opposites who become entangled in a mysterious plot involving a shadowy crime organization, and what ensues is a thrilling case that blurs the line between reality and fantasy. Kang Ji-hwan is the elite detective who believes in facts and forensics and evidence, who possesses intuition so keen that he earns the reputation for being a human lie detector.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpo3Q2u6Slo
Kim Ok-bin, on the other hand, is a detective with the extrasensory ability to feel and experience a victim’s death: When she hears the bell ringing that nobody else can hear, she becomes possessed by the victim and is able to collect pieces of memories that provide clues in the case.
We get glimpses of that in the teasers above, where Kang Ji-hwan examines the crime scene with a rational eye and says, “In this case, the truth is hidden in things we can’t see. What we see is not all there is.”
In her teaser, Kim Ok-bin arrives at the same crime scene and tells us, “When the bell rings, the truth is revealed.” As she looks around, she sees snippets of what happened to the victim and imagines herself in her place, and says, “This is the sixty-ninth death I have experienced.”
Children of a Lesser God is set to follow Bad Guys 2: City of Evil on OCN and will premiere on Saturday, February 24.
