A BL thriller about the love story of a killer and a cop

The current huge wave of series from China and Thailand makes it hard for BL fans to keep track, and series that are not hyped on social media sometimes remain almost unnoticed. “The Lie We Lived In“ (TLWLI) faced this problem, although it aired on viki, and it would deserve a lot more attention than it actually did.

The series is a BL thriller, a sub-genre in which some productions failed gloriously as writers either focused on the thriller and forgot to develop the protagonists’ characters and thus their love story, or they focused on the latter so that the thriller plot was weak, if not boring. TLWLI is a rare example of both subplots working. As many BL fans missed this series, I won’t spoil too much of the plot, or the enormous suspense of the story would be wasted.

Contract killer Seo I-do (Kim Seung-beom) is sent to a secluded house outside the city to kill Heo Dong-hwa (Lee Jeong-ho), who lives there on his own. He attacks Dong-hwa, but just before he is about to kill him, his boss calls him and orders him to keep Dong-hwa captive in the basement, because the mayor of the city, who is the person behind the criminal mission, wants him to find a cellphone Dong-hwa is believed to be hiding.

So I-do locks Dong-hwa up in a cage in the basement, but before he can start searching the house for the cellphone, Dong-hwa’s childhood friend Chu Tae-jeong (Kim Kyung-min) arrives. He is a police officer, who has just been transferred to the city’s police department. As Tae-jeong’s room in the police officers’ dorm isn’t ready, Dong-hwa has offered his friend to stay in his house for the time being.

Tae-jeong thinks that I-do is Dong-hwa’s elder brother who went to the USA 10 or 15 years ago, and I-do takes on the prodigal brother’s role. Tae-jeong is a bit too gullible for a detective, and I-do is clever enough to integrate every little hint that Tae-jeong reveals about the elder brother. He is also physically attracted by the killer, and when he notices that this hot guy is a talented artist, he becomes his model, which creates a first scene of intimacy between the killer and the cop.

I thought that I-do acting as Dong-hwa’s brother was the lie referred to in the title of the series, until I learnt six episodes later that there is a bigger, more fundamental lie that is the starting point of everything that happens in the series. I won’t tell you what it is, or all the suspense would be gone.

The plot that develops over the next few days has some surprising twists – Dong-hwa, the alleged victim, is no victim at all, the killer is determined to quit his job despite the pressure his boss puts on him, and the cop has asked to be transferred to his hometown for a personal reason, namely to find out if his father, a cop, too, whose dead body was found in his car in a nearby lake when Tae-jeong was kid, really committed suicide as was declared by the authorities.

When the cop realizes that the stories of these three young men are intertwined, things escalate, so we get to witness some well choreographed fights, and moments full of suspense when the killer’s boss enters the house to complete the mission, which his minion obviously is unable to do.

I enjoyed the well-written story a lot, as some of the plot twists happen without a warning, and the way the protagonists’ true characters are revealed step by step sends viewers on a rollercoaster of emotions. You suddenly realize you have pitied the wrong person, and you suddenly feel sympathy with the criminal. The only character who is genuinely good from beginning to end is cop Tae-jeong, and he is “good“ to a degree that could be called naive, but even that is not the complete truth.

As I already mentioned, the writing is extraordinary. The “thriller plot“ provides a lot of suspense, and the “opposites attract“ gay love story gives us the quantity of sweet and also hot moments we expect in a good BL show.

The whole atmosphere of the series is dark, and some of the decisive scenes are actually set in the semi-darkness of the house and especially of the basement. The cinematography absolutely matches the darkness of the plot, but when the characters are able to relax and breathe for a moment, or when they are happy, we get some beautiful shots of nature and beach.

Some funny scenes are interspersed as well, e.g. when the killer teaches the cop self-defense, and sometimes dramatic irony makes the viewers feel cleverer than the protagonists as we recognize some of the lies they do not notice (yet).

I was wondering how the authors would find a way to give this sinister story, in which several persons lose their lives, a happy ending, which most BL fans are yearning for, and this is the only point I felt a little disappointed at – it was too sugarcoated for my taste, but that’s really a matter of taste.

The directing matches the writing in so far as it is very much on point. Director Son Tae-gyum also directed the fantastic series “Love in the Big City“, which was rather a gay, more mature and more realistic series than a typical BL, so I expected high quality, and this is exactly what I got. The characters are well developed as none of the three leads are one-dimensionally good or evil.

The most impressive actor in this series is clearly Kim Seong-beom as he combines a perfect, strong and chiseled body with the sensitivity of an artist and the despair of a person who is stuck in a life he hates. He appears to be strong, but we feel his vulnerability. The scars on his body (kudos to the make-up department) not only make the cop suspicious of the alleged brother’s identity for the first time, but they also indicate to viewers the hardships the young mam had to endure in his life, while Seong-beom’s eyes reveal his character’s sadness and longing for a normal life.

Kim Kyung-min succeeds in acting as a naive, gullible person, who is at the same time clever and determined to achieve his goal of finding about his father’s death. He appears to be weak, but we feel his inner strength, which shows when it is he who saves the killer from being killed by his boss. In the scenes of intimacy between the killer and the cop both actors display a breathtaking intensity.

Lee Jeong-ho’s appearance and pitiful acting deceives the viewers in so far as he appears to personify a nice guy, but he later very credibly displays all the disgusting features of a completely evil person.

To sum up, this series offers you a solid thriller plot as well as a heartwarming love story, and I think it would also work as a movie in a theater. If you want to see cute high school boys experiencing their first same-sex love, this is not for you, but if you appreciate a more mature kind of plot, you will like it.