‘Behind Your Touch’ review: cheap slapstick humour hits rock bottom
After the tragic death of her mother and the trauma of having to witness it as it unfolded, Bong Ye-bun (played by the always lovable Han Ji-min) moves to start a new life in the quaint, fictional town of Mujin, where her aunt (played by Park Seong-yeon) and grandfather (Yang Jae-song) live. Her grandfather is the town’s veterinarian, whose job mainly encompasses caring for the numerous pets and livestock owned by the people of Mujin.
Fifteen years after her mother’s passing, Ye-bun has grown to follow in her now-retired grandfather’s footsteps by taking over his clinic. She renames it the Bong Animal Hospital and has a penchant for cats, dogs and other domestic pets, but her aunt insists that she place greater focus on caring for livestock because that’s where the money is. Meanwhile, detective Moon Jang-yeol (played by Lee Min-ki) arrives in town after being suspended from the force in Seoul and is quick to get the ball rolling on his work with the local police department’s Violent Crimes unit. But in a town as small and uneventful as Mujin, the only “violent crime” they’re really investigating is a berserk cow who fights back when Ye-bun tries to administer a vaccine.
When a stray asteroid from a passing meteor shower strikes Ye-bun in the dead of night and renders her unconscious, she awakes three days later, seemingly unscathed from the incident. But when she picks her cat up and her hand brushes against its behind, she is sent into a state of clairvoyance, where she sees flashes of the cat’s memories – yes, as the title of the show suggests, Ye-bun now has the ability to see into the memories and thoughts of animals and people when her hands rest on their butt cheeks.
Her newfound supernatural ability posits her as a village shaman of sorts, with townspeople lining round the block to have their butts caressed by Ye-bun for good fortune. But when actual crime begins hitting Mujin, Jang-yeol and Ye-bun cross paths and find themselves unwitting partners in solving strange mysteries and crimes as they unravel.
Behind Your Touch was never meant to be a serious show, as its premise clearly shows. It’s a tad bit familiar – the kooky, adorably oblivious but simple-minded female protagonist with bizarre abilities with a choppy bob and bangs, recalling Strong Girl Bok-soon or even Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-joo. The difference is Behind Your Touch is, at most times, beyond absurd.
Comedy can be smart and subversive, but the show relegates itself to low-brow slapstick and corny plot devices. Its overtones of eccentricity and silliness makes it really difficult to really enjoy the mystery and romance side of the show, which probably isn’t what the showrunners intended. There is little here beneath its surface of cheap laughs and sexual-harassment-turned-humour.
The lack of substance in Behind Your Touch is even more disappointing when you take into account the brilliant cast it boasts. Their incredible on-screen chemistry really reinforces and evokes the feeling of a tight-knit community often found in villages as small and rural as Mujin, but without a script that balances out the absurdity of it all, it’s a tall order to find any sense of fulfilment here – comic, emotional or otherwise.
Behind Your Touch is available to stream on Netflix, and also airs on JTBC every Saturday and Sunday.
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Carmen Chin
NME
