Stream It Or Skip It: ‘A Shop For Killers’ On Hulu, Where A Woman Finds Out Her Late Uncle Was Into Lots Of Shady Stuff — And People Want Revenge

A show that keeps things simple in its first episodes — a simple premise and a few characters — is refreshing in these days of prestige television, where showrunners want to introduce tons of characters and unfurl multiple plots from the jump. A new South Korean action series has two main characters and a pretty straightforward premise, and we couldn’t be happier.

A SHOP FOR KILLERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A siren goes off; we see speakers blaring out that weapons training will be conducted. We then see a house that looks like it’s been shot up; the brick wall in front of it is in rubble.

The Gist: Jeong Ji-an (Kim Hye-jun) is pinned down with two others in that house, as a sniper in a van at least a quarter-mile away has been taking shots at whatever moves. Ji-an remembers a talk she had with her late uncle, Jeong Ji-man (Lee Dong-wook) about blind spots while watching an action movie, and she takes his advice to heart, moving around where the sniper can’t see her. As she jumps from the top of the fridge to behind a sofa to find a pistol that skittered underneath, she lifts the couch to find a long-range rifle attached to the underside.

A few days earlier, Ji-an is at a police station, accused of assaulting a man who followed her into a women’s bathroom. As she’s being lectured by one of the cops, who seems to know her well, she gets a call that Ji-man, whom she’s been living with for a decade, is dead.

The last time he talked to her, he had given her a bulletproof cupboard that she can get into if something goes down, and he insisted that she memorize her college ID number. A taxi driver who knew Ji-man drives her to identify the body, but seems more upset that he’s dead than she is.

The medical examiner has determined that Ji-man killed himself, due to the angle of the wound on his neck. Ji-an seems doubtful that her uncle would commit suicide, and then notices a tattoo on his arm that says “Murthehelp.”

She goes to his house, where she grew up after her parents died, to start to prepare for his funeral; she’s surprised by Jeong-min (Park Ji-bin), an old classmate; he’s a tech expert that was helping Ji-man set up a website for his hose-selling business when he died. He volunteers to clean up the bathroom, where Ji-man was found. There, he finds a flip phone hidden in a cabinet.

During the funeral, Ji-an is lost in her own thoughts when two men that she’s never met come to pay their respects; the taxi driver who knew Ji-man berates the men for criticizing the man who saved his life when he was a boy.

When she gets back to the house, she finally breaks down and asks Jeong-min to keep her company. He shows her the phone, which she has never seen before; she sees texts that say someone has deposited over 18 billion won into his account, and that Ji-man needs to have the goods ready. Given that he sells hoses for agricultural use, Ji-an can’t imagine he’s made that money via hoses; with Jeong-min’s help, they find a dark web site called “Murthehelp,” like the tattoo on Ji-man’s arm. The hose sales site was a front; Murthehelp sells guns.

When someone pops up on chat, though, Ji-an tells them the store is closed. Not only does the person on the chat know who Ji-an is, they assume that Ji-man is dead. This means only one thing: Ji-an is the next to die.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? A Shop For Killers has a bit of a Breaking Bad-meets-John Woo vibe about it.

Our Take: Written by Ji Ho-jin and Lee Kwon (and based on the novel The Killer’s Shopping List), A Shop For Killers is certainly emphasizing the action over the story. But in this case, we’re not sure that’s much of a problem. The writers are keeping the number of characters to a relative few at first; we mostly get to know Ji-an and Ji-nan, with everyone else being bit players for now. And the story premise itself is straightforward; Ji-an finds out things about her uncle she never knew when he was alive, and as she finds things out she gets deeper into his world.

We were fine with that, as the first episode was full of tension and just enough action to keep us on edge, with fun shots like one where we follow a bullet from the sniper’s gun to its intended target. As Ji-an gets deeper into just what her uncle was up to, we’ll find out more about what happened to Ji-an’s parents and the things that Ji-nan taught her over the years they were together. That’s where the show’s complexity lies, in the relationship between uncle and niece.

But we’re also looking forward to seeing, for instance, just how Ji-an and Jeong-min get pinned down in the house with Min-hye (Geum Hae-na), an assassin posing as Ji-man’s Chinese instructor. We also want to know just how all of these assassins and other criminals know about Ji-an and why they’re targeting her now that Ji-man is dead. The weaving of the uncle-niece relationship with Ji-an trying to figure out just what Ji-man was into will make for what we hope is a fun story.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: We flash back to when Ji-man came into Ji-an’s life; she was a kid, and he hadn’t visited her parents or grandmother since before she was born.

Sleeper Star: Seo Hyun-woo was fun as Lee Seong-jo, the ace sniper who was shooting into Ji-man’s house in the show’s first scenes.

Most Pilot-y Line: When the two thugs hear the taxi driver wailing at Ji-man’s wake, they ask each other if the guy dated Ji-man. Yeesh.

Our Call: STREAM IT. A Shop For Killers keeps things pretty straightforward to start, which leaves a lot of room for some good action scenes and some exploration of its two main characters.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.