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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Delightfully Deceitful" Episode 1

One of the odder releases this season, at least from a distribution angle, is "Delightfully Deceitful" on tvN. Despite "Delightfully Deceitful" airing on a fairly mainstream network, the international rights for it are in a murky area. Some places the show is on Netflix, other places it's on Viu. But in a lot of markets, most notably the United States, "Delightfully Deceitful" isn't available anywhere legally.

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I suspect this awkward situation is thanks to director Jamie K Lee, whose drama "Shooting Star" became an unexpected hit...only in southeast Asia, creating a bidding war for his next project that just sort of ignored most other regions. "Delightfully Deceitful" is nothing like "Shooting Star" though. The story from rookie screenwriter Han Woo-joo has a vibe much more similar to "It's Okay to Not Be Okay" although in this case the implication is that being a sociopath is not entirely okay.

Technically the fact that lead character Ro-woon (played by Chun Woo-hee) is a sociopath is a spoiler. The script is quite ambiguous about how we're supposed to interpret her actions throughout the first episode due to her constant silence. In a bit of frankly lazy writing, by the end of the episode she's doing straight up asides to the audience. Probably to demonstrate that she really is smart, and not just bumbling through her release from jail?

"Delightfully Deceitful" works a lot better as an underspoken mystery, which is what the drama's about most of the time so far, fortunately. Our other lead character, attorney Moo-yeong (played by Kim Dong-wook), doesn't appear to be a sociopath. But he's not a very pleasant person in general. And his interest in Ro-woon is particularly mysterious, because what motivates Moo-yeong in general is extremely vague. In a key irony, it's Moo-yeong that has the best poker face even though he's first introduced representing a gambler and it's Ro-woon who takes a late trip to the casino.

In another strong beat for underspoken writing, Ro-woon doesn't actually explain the lynchpin to her plan- she's not gambling with her own money, but since the couple who lent her the money panics when security shows up, of course they don't ask for it back. This despite Ro-woon consistently, clearly, and correctly says that card counting isn't against the rules. So far "Delightfully Deceitful" has far more good beats than bad ones, its schemes as "Delightfully Deceitful" as the title implies.

Written by William Schwartz

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"Delightfully Deceitful" is directed by Jamie K Lee, written by Han Woo-joo, and features Chun Woo-hee, Kim Dong-wook, Yoon Park, Park Sojin, Lee Yeon, Yoo Hee-je. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2023/05/29~Now airing, Mon, Tue 20:50 on tvN.

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