Dead of Winter
凛冬下的罪恶
A 26-episode iQIYI police procedural set in a snowbound northeastern industrial city in the late 1990s, where two detectives chase a murder, a robbery gang and an old kidnapping.
Save- Premiere
- Aug 4, 2026
- Episodes
- 26
- Where to watch
- iQIYI
- Also known as
- Frozen Sins · In the Dead of Winter
About the drama
Dead of Winter (凛冬下的罪恶, Lin Dong Xia De Zui E, "crimes beneath the deep winter") is a police drama in the shehuipai (社会派, "social school") style of suspense, where the crime is a way into the society around it. Cases pile up in one city over a winter, and the drama keeps asking what each one says about the people involved.
It premiered on iQIYI on August 4, 2026, as part of the platform's newly launched Undercurrent Theater (暗流剧场, An Liu Ju Chang), and it is finished. The first release was a block of eight episodes for VIP members, then batches of four and two, so it was built to be watched in runs.
It is a procedural that cares about weather, factories and the tired texture of a place as much as the clues.
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Detective Shen Dongliang (沈栋梁, played by Zhang Rui, 张睿) is transferred to the criminal investigation team in Nuhe City (怒河市) and reunites with his old partner, Wu Hongbing (吴红兵, played by Wu Haochen, 吴昊宸). Both carry an unsolved kidnapping case from eight years earlier.
New trouble arrives quickly. A woman with a mental illness comes forward over a killing involving her husband. At first it looks like a simple report from a patient, but it leads the detectives to a long-buried case of a husband's murder. At the same time a bloody bank robbery brings a gang led by Zhang Zhenshan (张振山, played by Zhang Tao, 章涛) into view. The official synopsis says the two lines of investigation, the new crimes and the old case, are on a collision course, and that is where the series is headed.
The drama is set in the late 1990s in Nuhe City, described in launch coverage as a major industrial centre of Northeast China. Its production design aims for the worn look of the old industrial base: grey factory districts, snow-packed streets and rusting machinery.
It is directed by Ke Bolong (柯伯龙) and written by Wang Mihan (汪汨涵), who previously worked together on the crime series Xiaoshi de Xiongshou (消失的凶手, "the vanished killer") and Xiongshou de Yangzi (凶手的样子, "the killer's look"), according to Southern Entertainment. It is produced by Qishu Youyu (奇树有鱼) and Shiguang Zhenghao (时光正好), the former credited with earlier crime hits such as Mie Zui (灭罪, "wiping out crime").
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