Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de ~ 謎解きはディナーのあとで At first glance
One of the most over-rated, over-promoted, over-hyped drama in 2011. Why? I think that's only because I'm sick of seeing Sakurai Sho on every single magazine covers, variety shows, news (morning, night, whichever), CMs whether when I was in Japan or at home (viva internet!) for the past 6 months. But, setting aside the annoyance, how the drama actually fares? Is it worth my time aka less sleeping hours?
The drama is based on best selling novel under the same title by Higashigawa Tokuya that I should have bought when I was in Fukuoka so that I can at least compare it with the drama. The story is about a rookie detective named Hosho Reiko who is also an heiress (hail Paris Hilton) of Hosho empire. She works with inspector Kazamatsuri, another detective slash heir of Mazamatsuri motors (what's with rich people playing detective in J-drama land?) and she has a butler (hmm hmm a must have for an heiress) called Kageyama. Kageyama is a super butler, from making meals to driving ojou-sama around to gardening (the T-rex grass statue, LOL) to disguising as... a lot of things to solving the cases (giving hints with his sharp toungue) for his ojou-sama. Together, they have cases to be solved (well, actually Kageyama is the one doing the job, while the other 2 are just playing detective :p).
To be honest, Episode 1 is a blah to me. I cannot even finish it, despite my patience to wait for it to get better, and it's not even funny (where's the humor???). But Episode 2 is much much better, with the 2 detectives are still playing detective and Kageyama bounces around the crime scenes looking for clues. In episode 2, I find Kageyama's deduction is making more sense and more playful. But, how about the main leads acting? Well, we know Sho-chan can act (see The Quiz Show). His character in here is a butler, don't think it's a much challange in terms of emotion department, or to be exact he's challanged to have minimal emotion, and his expression is limited to a smirk, a devilish smile, frown and exitement in a weird way. So far, he's doing a good job and at least keep the drama momentum going. As for Keiko, she has pout countlessly and we just reached episode 2 and acting like a brat shouldn't be much a challange also.
What makes this drama exciting for me is the food served by Kageyama, they're all mouth watering not to mention beautiful! And on FujiTV website they even list down the dishes served there. The only dissapointment is that they don't provide the recipes :(. And also, OST is Meikyu Love Song by the lead's boyband, Arashi (perfect cashcow efficiency scenarios, nothing new). It's a good song but I don't get how love song match to a mystery solving drama. I mean, Lotus is about searching for a path, grasping the future (as what Ryu is searching in Bartender), Hatenai Sora is about getting up from failures (like what Seiji has done in Freeter). The only thing I can think of (I'm pushing it in here) is that the song is to be interpreted as Kageyama is always there when ojou-sama is frustrated due to her not being able to find more clues and puzzle = mystery (how corny :p).
My conclusion after Episode 2 is FujiTV is getting lazier by season, they need to have better script because I'm pretty sure the book has lots of interesting cases for them to play around. If they're just counting on Sho's popularity to get the drama going... we're going to see downward trends in rating to continue, which I hope this is not the case. Will I continue to watch this drama? I'll give it 1 more episode for this drama to see if it's getting interested or not, else, it'll go to the meh bucket like Tokujo Kabachi.