Social media misuse/abuse/overuse is front and centre once again, this time in the eight-part Taiwanese murder-mystery Million-Follower Detective.
It's a bit misleading if you think the "detective" in the title applies to weary cop Chen Chia-jen (HK star Ekin Cheng, typically charismatic even while he broods his way through 90% of his screen time), whose only social media presence stems from his online infamy.
It all starts when he shoots popular influencer Wei Yan (Kent Tsai), who is brandishing a gun outside police headquarters.
Before you can say "Threads is the new X" (OK, maybe it isn't, but moving on:), Chen becomes notorious for his seemingly callous disregard for human life. The fact that Wei Yan was doing something reckless and dangerous to start with, doesn't seem to factor into netizens' consideration.
There's something more sinister afoot, though. Wei Yan's shooting was predicted by a rising, masked online celebrity who calls herself Witch Baba.
More crimes in quick succession – matched by more uncanny predictions – get the whole city buzzing, and Chen finds himself reluctantly paired with another influencer, Ting-yu (singer-rapper-actor Shou Lo), in the investigation.
A million people online are invested in the case (hey, wouldn't Million-Follower Mystery have been more accurate, not to mention alliterative?), which gets twistier with each episode.
Worse still, it may have a link to Chen's estranged daughter Yu Chieh (Buffy Chen), an aspiring DJ-singer with whom he has struggled to connect since his wife's death. And why is Dr Kuo Ta Fu (Jacob Wang) always hovering around Wei Yan's hospital room?
Written and directed by animator-filmmaker Shaun Su, the show soon eschews exploring the societal issues and questions raised in its early moments – stunts for clicks, jumping-to-conclusions bias, character assassination and doxing among them, all without regard for those little things called consequences – to give its full attention to the central mystery.
Su keeps things baffling enough to keep us interested, and Chen and his professional as well as personal troubles are sufficient to keep us invested. Certain supporting characters get shattering backstories too, but to say more would lead to unforgivable spoilers.
Some episodes in the middle suffer from pacing problems and repetitive haranguing of certain characters – which ultimately makes sense, in a way, when we get to the final episode.
Speaking of which: after seeming to wrap things up neatly with a fair bit of running time left, Million-Follower Detective then foists its biggest conceit upon us: a surprise twist that is supposed to be one of those "Bet you didn't see that coming" moments.
It teeters precariously between contrived and convincing, and Su pulls it off mostly thanks to the energy put in by his cast – mainly Cheng, Shou, Patty Lee as eager Tech Division rookie Li Hsin Ping, and Lee Lee Zen as her stern boss He Chen Wei.
The show's overall unevenness aside, it scores points for being a compelling binge-watch – but mostly, for getting us to eventually give a hoot about characters who are initially really hard to like or sympathise with.
Now that's a pretty impressive feat of social (media) engineering.
All eight episodes of Million-Follower Detective are available on Netflix.
Summary:
The power of dour
