Two years after waking up undead with no memory, a zombie has taught himself to pass as human and hung out a private investigator's sign. Zombie Detective is a 2020 South Korean series from director Sim Jae-hyun that mixes comedy, fantasy, mystery and a dash of science fiction.
What is Zombie Detective about?
Kim Moo-young cannot recall a single thing about the life he led before he turned. What he does know is how to survive: for two years he has stayed in a village, studying the way people walk, talk and carry themselves until he could copy them convincingly. With that disguise in place he moves to the city and opens a detective office, hoping the work will let him live among humans and, with luck, lead him back to his own past. Kong Sun-ji arrives from a very different direction. She used to write for a current-affairs programme that handled public complaints, and she walked away from the job after a witness in a case she was working on was attacked by an unknown man. Her path crosses Moo-young's, and she takes a part-time position at his agency.
About the cast
The cast listed for the series is Bae Yoo-ram, Park Ju-hyun, Tae Hang-ho, Hwang Bo-ra, Lee Joong-ok, Choi Jin-hyuk and Ahn Se-ha, working under director Sim Jae-hyun.
Context & significance
Zombie stories usually treat the undead as a faceless threat. This series turns the viewpoint around and makes the zombie its lead, a character with an office to run and a missing past to recover, which steers the show towards comedy and detective fiction. That mix explains the four genre labels it carries: comedy, fantasy, mystery and sci-fi. Episodes run about an hour each, roughly 62 minutes, which leaves room for the detective work and for the longer question of who Moo-young used to be. It is a South Korean production released in 2020, and it will suit viewers who enjoy Korean television, amnesia mysteries, or supernatural stories told with a comic streak.
Watching Zombie Detective on Ktime
Zombie Detective is available to stream on K-Time, the Persian-focused service built for the Iranian diaspora. Reading this page is free; playing the episodes requires signing in to a K-Time account. The K-Time interface is offered in Farsi, so browsing and search work comfortably in Persian.