I watched the first episode of a 2016 Chinese police procedural called "Medical Examiner Dr. Qin" last night, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Spoilers ahead, but as you'll see it doesn't really matter.
The show starts with police finding a deep-fried human hand in a vat of illegal cooking oil. An unscrupulous vendor skimmed it from a sewer, where a criminal had just happened to dump the deep-fried remains of his two victims.
Having found deep-fried human remains of a human hand at a food market, the police decide they have 48 hours to solve the crime before the public becomes upset. For the rest of the show there is a digital counter, letting us know how the men and women in blue are doing.
Medical Examiner Qin has a heart of ice, but he knows his stuff. Li Dabao is the scrappy rookie assigned to help him. She looks like Harry Potter in a tweed suit, but don't be fooled! Lin Tao is the street-smart detective who doesn't always play by the rules. THEY FIGHT CRIME
Searching the sewer, they find more deep-fried human remains. Through careful forensic work and Holmes-like deduction, they trace the remains to a young couple who haven't been seen for weeks. The couple's apartment is full of blood, flies, and is emitting an overpowering stench
Inside the apartment, the detectives find the deep-fryer the killer used. They also find the victims skins hanging neatly in the closet, and their skulls in the freezer. The skulls were hit with a blunt object. Jackpot! The killer must be their plumber, who used a sledgehammer.
The clock is still ticking before the people of Longfan grow impatient and stop buying lunch at the fried-human-hand market. 28 hours to go! The cops find the run-down shack where the plumber lives, and pick the lock. The inside is full of women's underwear and pin-up posters.
What's more, there's a key-making machine! Now all the pieces fall together. The plumber was attracted to the lady, took an impression of her housekey while she wasn't looking, then made his own and tried to sneak in when she was out shopping with her husband, to steal her undies
Alas! He guessed wrong and the couple were home. Luckily he had brought his sledgehammer, so he sledgehammered them and then deep-fried the bodies and threw them in the sewer to get rid of the evidence, leaving only their skins hanging in the closet and an apartment full of blood
Naturally, the evil plumber confesses to all of this instantly. Even Medical Examiner Qin has to admit that the rookie did a good job. If not for her scrappy work, they might never have traced the hand to two missing people and their charnel-house apartment full of evidence.
The next episode of this series is called THE ELEVENTH FINGER and I can't wait to watch it.
This is basically The Wire set in modern China and I ask @aodespair on bended knee to get involved.
A fun part of watching a Chinese police procedural is just the little totalitarian details. No search warrant? No problem! Need to detain the food vendor for a while without charges? He'll be in cell block 2. Found a fingerprint? Run it through the national population registry!
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
