It's a whole new season of J-dramas and we're starting things off with a BANG with AMAZON Prime's "No Activity", a Buddy-Cop drama based on the American Series of the same name...which was based on an Australian series of the same name!
Starring Etsushi Toyokawa as the "loose cannon" cop Shingo Tokita and Tomoya Nakamura as his straight-laced ex-Driving Instructor new partner Asobu Shiina, who has just been paired with the unpredictable Tokita. So far it feels a lot like Toyokawa's "Bengoshi No Kuzu" drama from way back.
There is a huge Drug Deal going down and every cop is out in the streets, alert and ready for action. But Tokita and Shiina take a much more laid-back approach to things, even leaving the stakeout out of boredom! This is the kind of team they are!
Back at the station, we have the outspoken dispatch women, the seasoned Misato Satomi (Yoshino Kimura) and the newly appointed Arira Ohira (Nana Seino), whose take a no-nonsense approach to dealing with the dawdling detectives!
When not instructing the cops in the field (or breaking the balls of Tokita), the two spend their time trading barbed conversation with each other, to which we learn much about each of them!
While all of this is going on, two thugs have been hired by the baddies to babysit a witness who may have seen too much. But as they talk, we see that both Iwayama (Goro Kishitani) and Ichijo (Amane Okayama) are pretty inept at their job, good thing for them that their captive is a live-blogger named Mari (Yukino Kishi) who, instead of panicking about the abduction, is THRILLED at the viral opportunities the kidnapping can provide!
When I first began watching No Activity, I thought it would be a straightforward crime drama with light-hearted comedy, but as you may have guessed, is more like a flat-out comedy with straightforward crime sprinkled in!
A very WACKY show, I guess we'll have to see where this one goes!
