Review: 33 Minute Detective (2008)
It’s been a while since there has been a good j-drama detective show on, no matter how hard I’ve looked for one. But in looking for a new one to watch, I found an old one that I missed and not only is it good, it’s damn hysterical to boot!
Kurama Rokuro is a private eye who often works with the police to solve crimes. He’s a fan of old-school crime drama and I suppose he sees himself as operating in the scheme of Sherlock Holmes and similar classic detectives. While he’s a brilliant detective, he’s often wrong and draws absolutely absurd conclusions based on his own particular brand of “logic”. Police Inspector Otawara thinks he’s amazing and praises Rokuro even when he completely screws up.
The problem is, the cases that Rokuro is called in to solve are so ridiculously easy that they are usually solved in the first couple of minutes of the episode. But wait, Rokuro is the 33-minute Detective, he has to find a way to fill 33 minutes of mystery solving, he can’t possibly let anything go, just because it’s already solved. As the opening says: With incredibly easy cases that should only take 5 minutes to solve, a famous detective must somehow fill in the abundant 33 minutes of airtime completely. That man is the 33-minute detective, Kurama Rokuro. One after another, while unleashing inferences and vigorously increasing the number of suspects, will he or won’t he find the real perpetrator in the end?
Usually, the person has long since confessed to the crime while Rokuro and his team run around (literally) looking for non-existent evidence, crazy ideas and making absurd accusations and concocting bizarely complex scenarios. If this sounds strange, it absolutely is and it’s intended to be. Think of your typical j-drama detective show mixed with Police Squad, with Rokuro playing the Leslie Nielsen part.
The episodes are purposely extremely formulaic. It starts with someone trying to scam Rokuro’s female partner Rikako at the door of their office, only to have Police Inspector Otawara burst into the room, slamming the annoying scam artist against the wall. They rush off to the case, which is fairly simple to solve and Rokuro declares he can’t let the case end yet, there’s too much time left, so they head off to figure out who really done it. Along the way, Detective Motegi runs somewhere, and I mean runs. He runs everywhere, it’s an ongoing gag. They get into all kinds of bizarre situations that have nothing to do with the case, one example is episode 5 where they all learn to cook and decorate cakes for no good reason. He heads off to the “police lab” where he meets with Ai and the perverted scientist who keeps trying strange schemes to look up her skirt. Ai always has a bizarre present to give to Rokuro, such as a hand-made bread oven. After getting to the bottom of the physical evidence, Rokuro, apparently stumped, visits his informant, the same actor who is always working in a different
store, where he pays him for info and as he leaves, there’s someone else waiting to avail themselves to the informant’s services. In one, for example, was a doctor who wanted information on performing a hernia operation. Then Rokuro gathers all of the various suspects together, spins a long, involved yarn about how various people could have done it and then realizes that his plots are completely ridiculous and don’t match the evidence and eventually comes to the conclusion that the person that was caught red-handed at the beginning of the episode must have done it after all. And of course, at the very end of the show, all the actors freeze in the middle of some action while the credits roll, as if they were a still image. Unfortunately, nothing else in the scene freezes and most of the time, they start laughing as unexpected things happen. It’s great seeing what they try week after week.
That might sound like it would get boring after a while but it doesn’t. I haven’t laughed this hard at a show for a long, long time. They play off a lot of old 60s era American detective shows, complete with the really bad blue-screen scenes behind them when they’re driving somewhere. You never know what’ll show up, there have been scenes of the Colluseum, etc. They don’t necessarily drive cars though, Rokuro has been on a skateboard, roller skates, etc. as he heads from place to place. Like I said, think Police Squad.
The original series ran 9 40-ish minute episodes in 2008 and there was a second 4-episode run in 2009. I really, really hope they make more of these, they are fall-out-of-your-seat funny, especially if you like the mystery shows they are based on. I cannot recommend this series highly enough.
(5/5)
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