スティーラー～七つの朝鮮通宝～

The drama should've been called Karma or Skunk, more appropriate than whatever this mouthful title is. Anyway, the drama was quite average, delivering a forgettable experience that was hard to get excited about. Despite the intriguing concept of treasure hunting, it quickly devolved into a series of predictable and uninspired scenes. The characters and their backstories were bland, making it difficult to care about what happens to them and round them. The dialogue was often stale and lacked the sharpness or humor that could have added some much needed zest. Speaking of humor, while the drama was structured as an action comedy but the latter often fell short on delivering good material, with barely a couple of memorable comedic moments at the end. On the other hand, the action was a constant juggling act between enjoyable performances and half-arsed imitations. The police force in this drama was as incompetent as every other drama involving police work, as expected. They went out of their way to shamefully show how bad the police force was and subsequently made Skunk step down to an equal level just to make the dynamic between the two work, forcefully. The drama had an idea to work with but it barely done anything worthy with it.

Yes Stealer: The Treasure Keeper, is a little schmaltzy and silly, in a way that feels very Korean. That said, you know what, there's a lot to like here too. The back story of a artefact crime and recovery police unit who team up with a Robin Hood style, artefacts thief nicknamed "Skunk", is more interesting than it might seem, on first inspection. Yes the comedy is a bit lame but the back story has lots of action, with some interesting plot twists and turns. Its by no means a boring watch "if" you get beyond the first couple of admittedly, rather pedestrian, episodes. As is usually the case too with Korean series, the acting is more than decent, plus production values are of a high standard. In summary, yes the humour is a little lame but the underlying premise and story are intriguing and enjoyable, with lots of well paced action, to keep things moving along.