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Review: Who's the Keyman (我是大偵探) (2018)
If I had started watching Who's the Keyman (WTK) without having watched Who's the Murderer (WTM), I think that I might've enjoyed the show more. However, I felt WTK was lacking in several areas.
This might be an okay variety show to pass the time, but I didn't find myself invested in the mysteries at all. I also didn't find that the lineup of players was strong enough to keep me entertained, both when it came to humour and when it came to solving mysteries.
Spoilers.
Format
Almost all of the stories took place at a specific location, which was interesting. This typically only happened once or twice a season in WTM, so it was surprising that most of the mysteries except for one took place on location. Because so many mysteries were on location, it made sense that most of the mysteries were two-part cases. It allowed the show to take advantage of the details of the set.
I did think it was interesting that players were sent to different parts of the set to look for evidence once. In WTM, most of the mysteries involved the players being separated into two teams, with each team raking through the entire premises. However, doing so on location would've taken too much time, so it was a lot more efficient to divide it up that way.
Before I started the show, I thought that WTK would've been about escape rooms, so the English title "Who's the Keyman" is a little misleading. Instead, this show had completely PG cases, mostly involving characters being knocked unconscious. I felt it would've made more sense if more mysteries were about thefts. I just felt that it was kind of lame that there were so many cases about knocking people unconscious, as if it was so different from staging a murder.
Most of the "unconscious" victims were real people, as opposed to dummies which were used in WTM. This was good and bad. Good for realism, but bad because it got awkward for the players who had to manhandle them. It was also logistically difficult in cases like "Unable to Get out of the Old Mansion" where you had several characters with the same face as Yang Mi but of course only one Yang Mi.
In general, the episodes for WTK were shorter than WTM episodes. The last season I watched for WTM was season 3, and the episodes were often about 2-2.5 hours long. WTK episodes tended to be about 1.5 hours long. Honestly, I'm glad that they were shorter because I wasn't interested in the cases anymore and the shorter, the better. I think that the shorter episodes were likely due to the fact that the mysteries just weren't as in-depth as they usually would be for WTM, so there was no need for such long episodes.
Production
Evidence
I felt that the quality of evidence was not very high. There weren't any pieces of evidence that "sparked recognition" during the show. There wasn't any evidence that I'd see that made me excited to keep watching because it felt very suspicious and also tangentially related to something else.
Camerawork
WTM made use of body cameras but WTK rarely used such shots. Every time evidence was shown, it would be separately shot in a much neater way. I think that WTK was focused on being more polished than WTM was.
Audience engagement
WTK was AD HEAVY. There were many ads per episode. Not saying there wasn't advertising in WTM because there definitely was, but it was often done very quickly, or in an in-context way, whereas WTK had a lot of commercial breaks and overall I felt that the ads were presented kind of obnoxiously.
Apparently there was a vote-in portion of the show where viewers could vote for whomever they thought the keyman was. This would've been fun. I don't have an opinion on it either way.
Focus
Okay, this point is the big one that I've been thinking about. One of the reasons why I seemed to prefer WTM to WTK was that WTM was first and foremost a nerdy show. Even though it was funny, WTM was always about the cool mysteries first. Every cast member and guest was not afraid to get down and nerdy about how murders were done, and that definitely drew me in.
For WTK, I think the showrunners were trying too hard to go for the funny and shippy content. The show ran with largely the same cast for most of the entire show, but the issue is, I failed to see chemistry build up between these characters. Most of the "shippy" scenes felt very forced. They showrunners tried to get me to ship characters but I didn't care because their in-mystery characters were not interesting, and the actors themselves didn't necessarily have the same type of chemistry as the showrunners would want us to believe.
While we did have He Jiong and Da Zhangwei as series regulars, they weren't able to carry the show with WTM-level types of humour.
I wouldn't be surprised if the regular cast members were funny on other variety shows, but their chemistry on WTK didn't work for me, and the fact that it was the same people over and over again made it more of a slog for me. I used to get annoyed about how some of my favourite cast members were not on as much as I'd like on WTM, but now I appreciate how spacing them out and having them interact with different guests kept the story fresh.
Cases
The cases got pretty boring and honestly I can't remember how half of them went. For WTM, I typically remembered the main "gimmick" for the majority of the mysteries (except for the really weak mysteries) but I couldn't even do that for WTK cases.
Episode 1: An Inn
I thought this was a weak opening episode in general. In particular, because this was technically the first episode of a new series, I felt that the showrunners should've gone with a mystery that had a stronger story rather than a mystery with an interesting setting. The setting itself was pretty fun and cool, especially since there was both an indoor and outdoor section. But I didn't feel that anything about the mystery was engaging or interesting.
Episode 2: Meeting in 1998
I felt this was one of the more memorable cases because it took an interesting turn in a way that was definitive. As in, by the end of the mystery, the cast had a good amount of definitive clues to help them make informed decisions.
However, in this episode, I started noticing that while the quality of the set might've been high, the actual number of evidence items was not very high. A lot of objects were only there for ambience and atmosphere, as opposed to advancing the case.
Episode 3: Mysterious Museum: Part 1
This was the first two-part case. The first part involved stolen treasure. I thought it was interesting that the time spent clue hunting was also considered time when the suspects were being monitored. As in, the culprit had done some things while hunting for clues, and that counted as evidence.
However, I felt that the setting was weak because there was nothing about the building that made me feel like I was in a museum.
Episode 4: Mysterious Museum: Part 2
The second part of this mystery was where I started realizing that maybe I didn't like these mysteries as much. The mystery became a puzzle about the four scholars, but I felt that it became too far removed from the main case about the ripped painting for me to care.
I do admit that the secret chamber was pretty cool though. And I thought it was admirable that they made the same person the culprit for both mysteries, as that's usually something that would throw detectives off.
Episode 5: Mysterious Resort: Part 1
This first case had some interesting deduction, including the mystery of the number of cakes. I believe it was a little more logic-related than evidence-related, but that's fine if it's done in an interesting way.
Episode 6: Mysterious Reort: Part 2
In WTM, most second parts of mysteries tended to be rather meta. In other words, the second parts usually involved players questioning the existences of their characters.
This was the first episode in WTK that had this element, and it did interest me. The twists in this mystery reminded me of WTM, so I did enjoy those.
Also, it used a song from WTM, which prompted me to believe that it was a meta setting lol.
Episode 7: Unable to Get out of the Old Mansion: Part 1
I might be biased, but these two mysteries were definitely among the better ones because Bai Jingting and Wei Daxun returned to the cast. As we know, Bai Jingting is a pretty brainy guy, and while Wei Daxun is not the most brainy, he can still keep up with the deductive reasoning, and of course he brings a lot of the laughs with him.
Having He Jiong, Bai Jingting, and Wei Daxun in the same cast definitely strengthened the mystery somewhat, both in terms of deductive reasoning, and in terms of mood making.
The gimmick in this mystery was the staircase, and I thought that the cast did an interesting job uncovering how it worked with the help of clues around them mansion.
Episode 8: Unable to Get out of the Old Mansion: Part 2
This mystery got slightly confusing because we had several characters with the same face, but they made do.
Episode 9: Adventure in the Faraway Town: Part 1
This case used conclusive evidence, so I appreciated that. Other than that, however, I found it didn't leave a big impression on me.
Episode 10: Adventure in the Faraway Town: Part 2
In this episode, the perpetrator had actually committed their crime out of a need to protect rather than a need to harm. I thought that this was an interesting gimmick, and turned the usual habits of deductive reasoning on its head.
Episode 11: Ten Years After Graduation
The fact that this episode took place in a warehouse like they usually do for WTM was nostalgic. But at that point I was already fully checked out of the show. I didn't care for the cast so I didn't even pay that much attention to the case. It had an interesting premise, but I didn't care enough about the characters that the players were playing to following along in close detail.
Episode 12: Final Battle: Parts 1 and 2
These types of mysteries were actually a little refreshing. The six cast members were separated into two teams and would watch a mystery play out as a third party. Then they'd compete against each other by finding evidence and voting collectively as a team for the keyman.
I felt that this approach worked better for this cast. As I mentioned, I didn't think that this cast and the characters being written were very charismatic. As third party onlookers/detectives, the cast members could just be themselves as opposed to being themselves AND their characters. The suspect roles would be left to actors.
Episode 13: Final Battle: Part 3
I don't have much to add to this episode as it was the same format as last episode. It ended with a big farewell, but honestly I wasn't invested and I skipped through that.
Overall
Overall, I was pretty let down by WTK for the following reasons.
- The show tried to rely on its main cast but they were not very charimsatic. There wasn't enough variety in the guests and the interactions among the main cast got stale.
- The mysteries were not written in a very interesting way, and the characters were not charismatic. I think this is why I got tired of the cast members so fast. They were acting similar people every time. Characters didn't have gimmicks that made them wacky and memorable.
- The mysteries didn't seem to be set up in an interesting way. There was not a lot of interesting evidence that made me more curious.
- The show tried to push ships and cast member interactions too much, as opposed to letting the cast members get nerdy.
This might be an okay variety show to pass the time, but I didn't find myself invested in the mysteries at all. I also didn't find that the lineup of players was strong enough to keep me entertained, both when it came to humour and when it came to solving mysteries.
Spoilers.
Format
Almost all of the stories took place at a specific location, which was interesting. This typically only happened once or twice a season in WTM, so it was surprising that most of the mysteries except for one took place on location. Because so many mysteries were on location, it made sense that most of the mysteries were two-part cases. It allowed the show to take advantage of the details of the set.
I did think it was interesting that players were sent to different parts of the set to look for evidence once. In WTM, most of the mysteries involved the players being separated into two teams, with each team raking through the entire premises. However, doing so on location would've taken too much time, so it was a lot more efficient to divide it up that way.
Before I started the show, I thought that WTK would've been about escape rooms, so the English title "Who's the Keyman" is a little misleading. Instead, this show had completely PG cases, mostly involving characters being knocked unconscious. I felt it would've made more sense if more mysteries were about thefts. I just felt that it was kind of lame that there were so many cases about knocking people unconscious, as if it was so different from staging a murder.
Most of the "unconscious" victims were real people, as opposed to dummies which were used in WTM. This was good and bad. Good for realism, but bad because it got awkward for the players who had to manhandle them. It was also logistically difficult in cases like "Unable to Get out of the Old Mansion" where you had several characters with the same face as Yang Mi but of course only one Yang Mi.
In general, the episodes for WTK were shorter than WTM episodes. The last season I watched for WTM was season 3, and the episodes were often about 2-2.5 hours long. WTK episodes tended to be about 1.5 hours long. Honestly, I'm glad that they were shorter because I wasn't interested in the cases anymore and the shorter, the better. I think that the shorter episodes were likely due to the fact that the mysteries just weren't as in-depth as they usually would be for WTM, so there was no need for such long episodes.
Production
Evidence
I felt that the quality of evidence was not very high. There weren't any pieces of evidence that "sparked recognition" during the show. There wasn't any evidence that I'd see that made me excited to keep watching because it felt very suspicious and also tangentially related to something else.
Camerawork
WTM made use of body cameras but WTK rarely used such shots. Every time evidence was shown, it would be separately shot in a much neater way. I think that WTK was focused on being more polished than WTM was.
Audience engagement
WTK was AD HEAVY. There were many ads per episode. Not saying there wasn't advertising in WTM because there definitely was, but it was often done very quickly, or in an in-context way, whereas WTK had a lot of commercial breaks and overall I felt that the ads were presented kind of obnoxiously.
Apparently there was a vote-in portion of the show where viewers could vote for whomever they thought the keyman was. This would've been fun. I don't have an opinion on it either way.
Focus
Okay, this point is the big one that I've been thinking about. One of the reasons why I seemed to prefer WTM to WTK was that WTM was first and foremost a nerdy show. Even though it was funny, WTM was always about the cool mysteries first. Every cast member and guest was not afraid to get down and nerdy about how murders were done, and that definitely drew me in.
For WTK, I think the showrunners were trying too hard to go for the funny and shippy content. The show ran with largely the same cast for most of the entire show, but the issue is, I failed to see chemistry build up between these characters. Most of the "shippy" scenes felt very forced. They showrunners tried to get me to ship characters but I didn't care because their in-mystery characters were not interesting, and the actors themselves didn't necessarily have the same type of chemistry as the showrunners would want us to believe.
While we did have He Jiong and Da Zhangwei as series regulars, they weren't able to carry the show with WTM-level types of humour.
I wouldn't be surprised if the regular cast members were funny on other variety shows, but their chemistry on WTK didn't work for me, and the fact that it was the same people over and over again made it more of a slog for me. I used to get annoyed about how some of my favourite cast members were not on as much as I'd like on WTM, but now I appreciate how spacing them out and having them interact with different guests kept the story fresh.
Cases
The cases got pretty boring and honestly I can't remember how half of them went. For WTM, I typically remembered the main "gimmick" for the majority of the mysteries (except for the really weak mysteries) but I couldn't even do that for WTK cases.
Episode 1: An Inn
I thought this was a weak opening episode in general. In particular, because this was technically the first episode of a new series, I felt that the showrunners should've gone with a mystery that had a stronger story rather than a mystery with an interesting setting. The setting itself was pretty fun and cool, especially since there was both an indoor and outdoor section. But I didn't feel that anything about the mystery was engaging or interesting.
Episode 2: Meeting in 1998
I felt this was one of the more memorable cases because it took an interesting turn in a way that was definitive. As in, by the end of the mystery, the cast had a good amount of definitive clues to help them make informed decisions.
However, in this episode, I started noticing that while the quality of the set might've been high, the actual number of evidence items was not very high. A lot of objects were only there for ambience and atmosphere, as opposed to advancing the case.
Episode 3: Mysterious Museum: Part 1
This was the first two-part case. The first part involved stolen treasure. I thought it was interesting that the time spent clue hunting was also considered time when the suspects were being monitored. As in, the culprit had done some things while hunting for clues, and that counted as evidence.
However, I felt that the setting was weak because there was nothing about the building that made me feel like I was in a museum.
Episode 4: Mysterious Museum: Part 2
The second part of this mystery was where I started realizing that maybe I didn't like these mysteries as much. The mystery became a puzzle about the four scholars, but I felt that it became too far removed from the main case about the ripped painting for me to care.
I do admit that the secret chamber was pretty cool though. And I thought it was admirable that they made the same person the culprit for both mysteries, as that's usually something that would throw detectives off.
Episode 5: Mysterious Resort: Part 1
This first case had some interesting deduction, including the mystery of the number of cakes. I believe it was a little more logic-related than evidence-related, but that's fine if it's done in an interesting way.
Episode 6: Mysterious Reort: Part 2
In WTM, most second parts of mysteries tended to be rather meta. In other words, the second parts usually involved players questioning the existences of their characters.
This was the first episode in WTK that had this element, and it did interest me. The twists in this mystery reminded me of WTM, so I did enjoy those.
Also, it used a song from WTM, which prompted me to believe that it was a meta setting lol.
Episode 7: Unable to Get out of the Old Mansion: Part 1
I might be biased, but these two mysteries were definitely among the better ones because Bai Jingting and Wei Daxun returned to the cast. As we know, Bai Jingting is a pretty brainy guy, and while Wei Daxun is not the most brainy, he can still keep up with the deductive reasoning, and of course he brings a lot of the laughs with him.
Having He Jiong, Bai Jingting, and Wei Daxun in the same cast definitely strengthened the mystery somewhat, both in terms of deductive reasoning, and in terms of mood making.
The gimmick in this mystery was the staircase, and I thought that the cast did an interesting job uncovering how it worked with the help of clues around them mansion.
Episode 8: Unable to Get out of the Old Mansion: Part 2
This mystery got slightly confusing because we had several characters with the same face, but they made do.
Episode 9: Adventure in the Faraway Town: Part 1
This case used conclusive evidence, so I appreciated that. Other than that, however, I found it didn't leave a big impression on me.
Episode 10: Adventure in the Faraway Town: Part 2
In this episode, the perpetrator had actually committed their crime out of a need to protect rather than a need to harm. I thought that this was an interesting gimmick, and turned the usual habits of deductive reasoning on its head.
Episode 11: Ten Years After Graduation
The fact that this episode took place in a warehouse like they usually do for WTM was nostalgic. But at that point I was already fully checked out of the show. I didn't care for the cast so I didn't even pay that much attention to the case. It had an interesting premise, but I didn't care enough about the characters that the players were playing to following along in close detail.
Episode 12: Final Battle: Parts 1 and 2
These types of mysteries were actually a little refreshing. The six cast members were separated into two teams and would watch a mystery play out as a third party. Then they'd compete against each other by finding evidence and voting collectively as a team for the keyman.
I felt that this approach worked better for this cast. As I mentioned, I didn't think that this cast and the characters being written were very charismatic. As third party onlookers/detectives, the cast members could just be themselves as opposed to being themselves AND their characters. The suspect roles would be left to actors.
Episode 13: Final Battle: Part 3
I don't have much to add to this episode as it was the same format as last episode. It ended with a big farewell, but honestly I wasn't invested and I skipped through that.
Overall
Overall, I was pretty let down by WTK for the following reasons.
- The show tried to rely on its main cast but they were not very charimsatic. There wasn't enough variety in the guests and the interactions among the main cast got stale.
- The mysteries were not written in a very interesting way, and the characters were not charismatic. I think this is why I got tired of the cast members so fast. They were acting similar people every time. Characters didn't have gimmicks that made them wacky and memorable.
- The mysteries didn't seem to be set up in an interesting way. There was not a lot of interesting evidence that made me more curious.
- The show tried to push ships and cast member interactions too much, as opposed to letting the cast members get nerdy.