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Pierce Conran

This article contains mild spoilers.
Lead cast: Kim Nam-gil, Lee Hanee, Kim Sung-kyun, Bibi, Sung Joon
Latest Nielsen rating: 12.1 per cent
A priest, a cop and a prosecutor take a trip to the seaside. No, this isn’t the start of a joke, although The Fiery Priest season 2, the show these characters appear in, is certainly chock-a-block with them.


The seaside here is the coastal metropolis of Busan and the trip is a covert investigation into the illicit drug-selling activities of a nefarious gang feeding off the weak and being fed by corrupt fat-cat bureaucrats.
Kim Nam-gil plays secret agent turned Catholic priest Kim Hae-il, who is alerted to the gang’s evil influence when an altar boy in his Seoul parish winds up in a coma after narcotics are forced down his throat.
Seeking to pinpoint and eradicate the source of the drugs, he heads south to Busan, but makes it very clear to his crime-fighting allies in the parish that he does not want any of them to follow him.
The first to disobey is elastic-faced inspector Gu Dae-young (Kim Sung-kyun). By the time we reach the halfway point of the series, all the members of Hae-il’s motley crew have found excuses to pop down to Busan, although their contributions to the ongoing investigation vary.

Hae-il’s prosecutor ally Park Kyung-sun (Lee Hanee), who begins season 2 ferreting out criminals in America, also packs her bags and shows up, having temporarily transferred to the Busan Prosecutor’s Office, where she works directly under the very corrupt Nam Doo-heon (Seo Hyun-woo, Uncle Samsik).
Also lending a hand is local detective Gu Ja-young (Bibi, Gangnam B-Side), whose official activities are being suppressed by fellow policemen who are taking bribes.
The local illegal-drug business is led by the handsome and confident Kim Hong-sik (Sung Joon, Island), a Busan native who was sold to Thailand as a child, where he grew up in a drug cartel on his way to becoming a drug kingpin based in Laos.
He returns to Busan at the beginning of the series to tighten up the sloppy local drug distribution; part of his plan involves appearing to disadvantaged older people as a guardian angel.

Hong-sik offers penniless old people employment and subsequently puts them to work in his secret drug-packing factory, where he steadily turns them into obedient, drug-addicted slaves.
Hae-il temporarily offers his services at a church in Busan, and there he meets Hong-sik, who presents himself as a slick benefactor of the organisation.
It takes a while for Hae-il to figure out who he really is. The moment the penny drops, at the end of episode seven, Hae-il locks eyes with Hong-sik across the front lawn of the church and, as if on cue, rain starts to pour down.
The pair hurtle towards each other and engage in a slow-motion fist fight that doffs its hat to the climactic fight between Neo and Agent Smith in The Matrix Revolutions and the famous sequence in the Korean action-noir classic Nowhere to Hide that influenced it.

Hong-sik dispatches foes and traitors without breaking a sweat, but once Kyung-sun appears before him he turns into a smitten young boy, bashful and unable to hide his crush.
Although the story here is a very simple one, The Fiery Priest season 2 features a large cast of characters who engage in various activities in episodes that push the 80-minute mark.
Truth be told, the investigation here does not really matter. It is an excuse to throw all these characters into outrageous situations and see what sticks.
Whenever Hae-il and Kyung-sun meet for a debrief, it has to happen in a visually incongruous location where Kim and Lee can yuck it up for the camera – be it wearing silly hats in photo booths, posing for photos in a museum of trick photography, or contorting themselves in a Pilates studio.

The show entertains by overloading the senses, with costumes and slapstick comedy often doing the heavy lifting in lieu of the storyline, which is thin.
This desire to please sometimes goes a little too far – there are some head-scratching horror allusions. These include our intrepid investigators pretending to be zombies to scare off goons, and a mischievous ghost who randomly pops up in Kyung-sun’s apartment before being transferred to Hae-il’s room, where it makes a cross out of spinning coins on his desk.
Entertainment may be the order of the day, but The Fiery Priest season 2 can at times exhibit a faint whiff of desperation; the laughs are broader and the scenarios less coherent than in the first hit season of the show.
That said, there is no denying that Kim and company throw themselves at the task, extracting every bit of mirth they can from the scripts they have been handed.
The Fiery Priest season two is streaming on Disney+.


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Kim Nam-gil as secret agent turned Catholic priest Kim Hae-il in a still from The Fiery Priest season 2. The show has come to rely on slapstick comedy rather than a strong storyline.

Kim Sung-kyun as elastic-faced police inspector Gu Dae-young in a still from The Fiery Priest season 2.

Lee Hanee as Hae-il’s prosecutor ally Park Kyung-sun in a still from The Fiery Priest season 2.

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Kim Nam-gil as Kim Hae-il in a still from The Fiery Priest season 2.

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Seo Hyun-jin as Noh In-ji in a still from The Trunk. Photo: Kim Seung-wan/Netflix

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Slapstick humour and ludicrous scenarios take over as Kim Nam-gil fights a drug lord, in a series that has become funnier but less coherent


Slapstick humour and ludicrous scenarios take over as Kim Nam-gil fights a drug lord, in a series that has become funnier but less coherent.
