Netflix drama Copycat Killer: Taiwanese whodunit about a media-savvy murderer, starring Wu Kang-ren, Alice Ko and Ruby Lin, keeps viewers guessing

Set in 1990s Taipei, murder mystery Copycat Killer, about a manipulative killer and an upright prosecutor, is based on a novel by Japanese author Miyuki Miyabe

The starry cast is a big draw for this thriller with soap opera elements, and with its twists and turns it’s hard to know where, or how well, the series will end

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Wu Kang-ren as courageous cop Kuo Hsiao-chi in a still from Copycat Killer. With so many twists and turns it’s hard to know how this Taiwanese whodunit will end. Photo: Netflix

Published: 5:15pm, 29 Mar 2023

In Taipei circa 1997, someone is murdering young women. Such is the premise of Copycat Killer, the latest star-studded Taiwanese drama series on Netflix.

Adapted from a novel by prolific Japanese author Miyuki Miyabe, the show is produced by Greener Grass Production, the team behind The Victims’ Game – the first Chinese-language series to date to be brought back for a second season by the streaming platform.

The cast includes familiar faces from big and small screens, among them Wu Kang-ren, Cammy Chiang Yi-jung and Ruby Lin Hsin-ru, who all featured in last year’s hit series Light the Night.

Tou Chung-hua, Alice Ko Chia-yen, Hsia Teng-hung and Fandy Fan Shao-hsun also star. Chang Jung-chi, who directed Fan in the 2019 basketball drama We Are Champions, co-directs the series with Henri Chang Heng-ju.

The 10-episode series opens with a masked killer known as “Noh” sending a videotape of himself to all of the city’s news networks, goading top prosecutor Kuo Hsiao-chi (Wu) into a deadly game of cat and mouse. Before any further explanation is given, we jump back in time eight weeks to witness Kuo in action.