The Guilty

In 2010, the young daughter of Xia Xue (夏雪, Sun Qian, 孙千) and Hou Jun (侯军, Wang Longzheng, 王龙正) is kidnapped. A detective team led by Qin Wen (秦文, Wang Zhener, 王真儿) takes the case and soon finds it is not a simple one: the thread leads back to the shipyard owner Ma Derong (马德荣, Wu Gang, 吴刚).

Behind the case sits a secret from 1999. Lu Ming and Xia Xue are childhood sweethearts, and Lin Hua is their close friend. Lu Ming (陆鸣, Wei Daxun, 魏大勋), Lin Hua (林华, Gao Zhiting, 高至霆) and Xia Xue were once young people with a future. After that year they carried something they could not tell anyone, and the series moves between those timelines. The official line, repeated by Lianhe Zaobao, is "a guilty body, an innocent heart" (有罪之身，无罪之心).

The story begins in the 1990s in a coastal small town and returns to the 2010 present. According to China Daily, the series runs three timelines in parallel and had an 18-month preparation. It also says the production kept violence off screen and dwelt on the social causes of the crime.

The drama is directed by Fu Dongyu (傅东育) and Guo Zhaoyu (郭兆宇). Filming began in Foshan, Guangdong, on November 8, 2024, and wrapped on December 9, according to Chinese Wikipedia.

The show was first called A Sinless Person (无罪之身) and was renamed The Guilty just before it aired, per Chinese Wikipedia and Lianhe Zaobao. The Zaobao review notes that this left viewers debating whether the characters are guilty or innocent.