We’ve finally got a premiere date for tvN’s upcoming remake of Criminal Minds, and not a moment too soon since it’ll start its run at the end of this month. The show has also released a short first teaser featuring our main characters, and it’s just as tense and dramatic as you’d expect of a crime thriller.
The teaser starts with Sohn Hyun-joo (Three Days) narrating offscreen: “We promise you, that we will catch them.” We get flashes of our profiler team and crime scenes as a male survivor says in a terrified voice, “When I close my eyes, I can picture his gaze so vividly, I can’t keep them closed.” Another victim, this time a woman, begs for her life, while a man yells at someone to stop. We get brief scenes of our team in action; racing in a police car, subduing a suspect in a hospital, and Lee Jun-ki (Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo) looking bloody and battered. “We can stop them, if we can think like them.”
After reading the character descriptions, it sounds like the Korean remake is going to transplant a lot of the same characters from the original American show into this adaptation, with a few minor tweaks. Sohn Hyun-joo will play team leader Kang Ki-hyung, who is described as highly intellectual and level-headed, and widely considered the best profiler in Korea. He sounds like a mix of Jason Gideon and Aaron Hotchner’s characters, and I could see Sohn Hyun-joo acting the heck out of it.
Lee Jun-ki’s agent Kim Hyun-joon sounds like he’ll be taking Derek Morgan’s role in the profiler team: He’s tasked with the more physical aspects of being an NCI agent, such as taking down suspects or chasing them on foot. Usually lighthearted and easygoing, he does a 180 turn at crime scenes and is the most assertive team member. Just as passionate about her job is Moon Chae-won’s (Goodbye Mr. Black) Ha Seon-woo, whose main role in the team is analyzing the crime scene. Like Emily Prentiss, Ha Seon-woo is exceptionally good at her job and doesn’t let threats to her safety stand in the way of her responsibilities.
JJ’s Communications Liaison role goes to Yoo Min-young, played by Lee Sun-bin (Missing 9), and Go Yoon (Monster) will play the youngest-ever agent Lee Han, who holds a Ph.D. in psychology. Oh, I’m so glad Reid’s character will have a part in the Korean adaptation, and I can’t wait to see how Lee Han and Kim Hyun-joon get along. I’m also super happy to see that Penelope Garcia will have a Korean counterpart in Yoo Sun’s (Our Gap-soon) Nana Hwang, complete with badass hacking skills and unique sense of style.
It looks like there’ll be some internal conflict in addition to the various episodic crimes our profiler team will struggle to solve: Kim Young-chul (Father Is Strange) will play Baek San, who founded the profiling branch NCI and acts as its director. Baek San is described as a charismatic figure skilled in politics, who can’t be squared away into being a “good” or “bad” character. I just hope there isn’t too much intra-agency politicking involved in this adaptation, because I prefer our profilers taking down our baddies in the field and not getting too caught up in bureaucratic maneuvering.
Criminal Minds is set to premiere on July 26 in tvn’s new Wednesday-Thursday slot.
