Unriddle

I guess everyone knew this was coming.

That's right. After two years of hiatus, Mediacorp finally produces another CID genre drama, Unriddle, the August 9pm prime time drama! The crew crack down on peculiar cases, including a human trafficking group and a clown who kidnaps children and dresses them up as dolls, and in the midst digging out a case which passed 15 years ago.

The two female leads of this show is Rui En and Chen Li Ping.
Rui En plays the head of the CID department, Hu Xiaoman, and cracks down on major cases, but due to a conflict with her superior in a case related to Yuze, her department "downgraded" and worked on missing person cases instead.
Chen Li Ping plays Da Bao, an informer, or spy, who helps to gather information by joining the criminals (an act to gather sufficient information for the crack down).

Tay Ping Hui plays Yuze, whose informer is Da Bao. He is the head of a department in the police force, but later on during a confrontation with Savage, the human trafficking group leader, disappears without a trace.

I enjoy watching the chemistry between Rui En and Chen Li Ping. At the start, Rui En mistook Chen Li Ping as one of the members of the human trafficking group and tries to arrest her, but realises that she is an informer following Yuze's disappearance. Chen Li Ping then becomes Rui En's informer instead and they both worked together to crack and solve many cases. In the subsequent scenes together, Chen Li Ping is always portrayed comically and they both are always trying to spite each other, although they do not mean to do it.

I thought this genre was kind of unusual and interesting. I was immersed in the first few episodes as the story progressed quickly and did not drag, unlike 180 episodes Your Hand in Mine, and the plots were well-developed and detailed explanation was given at the end of each case. The show requires its viewers to think deeper than what they see in order to understand the case, and this makes the whole show more interesting and exciting.

Due to a warning by the MDA on violence during the family time slot (9pm), they censored many of the scenes to ensure they meet the MDA requirements on censorship. This made the show much less interesting as the more exciting parts (fighting etc.) were removed.

This show also met with alot of complains from the viewers. Unriddle is accused of copying the plot of a Hong Kong drama (which the scriptwriter clarified that he had never watched that claimed drama before) and Chen Li Ping is even said to be too fat to be an informer, with several netizens commenting that "Look at the way she runs. It's like she'll fall down anytime". These complains are redundant and we should support the local dramas by providing feedback instead of marking them down by complains, some of which aren't even justified.

One of the better shows this year, together with "With You", this show might garner a place in the Best Drama Star Awards 2011 category. A must-watch!

Rating: 4/5