My Dearly Sinful Mind 心理追兇 Mind Hunter TVB Review

Hello!

It has been a long while since we've posted drama reviews for TVB because to be honest, we watched a few episodes of Provocateur and Married But Available, but they just didn't keep us interested. Surprisingly, we have been pretty up to date with My Dearly Sinful Mind as we usually enjoy crime and mystery dramas. We know it's been a while since this has aired but we have been quite busy.

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Plot Overview: In this crime thriller, psychologist Chung Tai Yin (Kenneth Ma) attempts to seek the truth behind a murder case which indirectly caused his girlfriend (Roxanne Tong), Icy's death. In the case, Lo Kin Keung (Willie Wai), a campus worker is found to have killed three girls and stabbed two. Icy was Lo Kin Keung's psychologist and had previously reported that he was not aggressive. This caused an argument between Tai Yin or TY and her, causing her to get run over by a car. As TY works to uncover the truth, he finds himself involved with a series of other cases.

Thoughts and Opinions: 

This drama had one big case that was the background focus of the entire drama, but it had small individual cases that were sometimes unrelated to the over-arching mystery. This could have gotten messy and disconnected when they started solving other cases, but the drama still managed to flow and make sense to us. We will mostly be focussing on the characters and the acting. 

The first case featured Kent Tong and Jade Leung as a divorced couple that have two sons, the older one involved in the murder of a Yuki, this 'prostitute/hooker?' It was nice seeing Kent Tong in a TVB drama again and we didn't even know he was a guest star. There seemed to be little publicity on this drama before it aired unlike some of the other ones (My Unfair Lady) that are airing this year for the 50th Anniversary. 

We thought Mat Yeung's Day stole the show for the first case. His acting is very natural here as someone with Asperger's Syndrome while still providing comic relief. A role like Day's easily shows the range of an actor abilities and we're happy that Mat is getting more roles to show his versatility.

The second case featured Helen Ma, Ho Yuen-Tong where the mom was abusing the son in public. This caused the son Ah Man to develop mental health problems. To vent out his inner emotions, he would throw things from buildings onto people who were rude and reflected his mom's behaviour. We really enjoyed this case because we felt for Man. His monologue at Free-D Radio to search for his mom was very emotional and was a highlight of the drama.

The main case revolved around Grace Wong's character Wong Hoi-Ching. It started off with Kenneth's TY Chung trying to find out what happened with his girlfriend's patient. Roxanne Tong plays Icy, TY's girlfriend who died in a car accident and she is also a psychologist. Her patient Lo Kin-Keung was involved in a murder of three girls who were friends with Grace Wong but she only got injured. The case took a while to develop because it contained a number of smaller cases that related to the characters. 

The first one was the mysterious packages that Grace received. We already felt that she was fishy when Kenneth started to help her with PTSD from the murder case. Grace Wong has definitely proved herself as a great actress with this role and from AFWFW last year. She acts well with her eyes, they can be fierce and passionate when her character calls for it. In many ways, she overshadowed the rest of the cast because there was more to her character at every turn. The more you watched, the scarier it became and she pulled it off well. 

We found Kenneth on the other hand to be just adequate here. There was nothing special and his imaginative scenes with Roxanne got redundant after like the fifth time. They played the same song every time he thought of her and it became unnecessary for him to have arguments in his mind with her when he went ahead with his plans anyways. We've always found his emotional scenes harder to watch because he keeps this longing, sad expression for too long without saying anything. In this drama, they improved but we preferred him as the serious TY Chung.

Although Sisley's acting here is a lot better than her old days, we thought her character Moon was kinda unnecessary. She didn't have much to do besides serve as Win Sir (Pierre Ngo)'s love interest and be the victim for a couple of cases. Mind you the whole love story with Win Sir only really developed in the last 5 episodes. But fortunately, it did not feel like a chore to watch her as she had great chemistry with Day as brothers and sisters. Pierre being paired with Sisley was a totally new pair and surprisingly, it was not bad to watch at all.

Speaking of Win Sir, we are glad that Pierre is finally getting larger roles, and he had quite a lot of screentime (even though he was still a supporting actor). It was nice to watch his character because the role of Win Sir was not the conventional, righteous and honorable policeman that we've seen in many dramas (except for Destination Nowhere). Instead, Win Sir was definitely flawed in that he was pessimistic at times and bitter as he blamed his dad and Day for ruining his life. 

The other stories about Grace manipulating people to get what she wanted was quite twisted. Near the end, the deaths just piled up and it wasn't even sad anymore. By the time Jack Wu (the psychologist turned bar owner friend) died, it was just another death in the books to further prove the manipulation of the Wong siblings. The drama would have been better if they took that death out and took more time to mourn for the other deaths like Dr. Fong (Stephen Wong).

We thought the ending was unconventional and that was something nice to see from TVB. First off, usually if TVB wants to go the happy route, the two villains would be either killed or would end up in jail. They did kill off Raymond Cho but it was Grace who out-smarted him. She ended up walking off sending the audience a chill down their spines yet she was able to give off a heroine vibe. This was definitely a defining moment for her character. The second thing that was different was TY driving his car straight into the ocean. Of course the series ends just as his car reaches the water so you're left wondering if he actually died to reunite with Icy. We like to think he did die and that everything to do with the drama ended right then and there. It was a nice closure despite killing off the main character. 

This drama worked in terms of characters and acting because the supporting cast was strong creating an interesting balance of characters on screen. We rate this series 8/10. 

Thanks for reading our review!

-CeeJay