Under the Skin
猎罪图鉴
A 20-episode iQIYI crime mystery in which a police sketch artist and a captain who blames him for a colleague's death are forced to solve a run of strange cases together.
Save- Premiere
- Mar 6, 2022
- Episodes
- 48
- Where to watch
- iQIYI, Tencent Video
- Also known as
- 猎罪图鉴 2 · 獵罪圖鑑 · 獵罪圖鑑 2 · Under The Skin · Under The Skin Ⅱ
About the drama
Most police dramas build the case around the detective. Under the Skin (猎罪图鉴, Lie Zui Tu Jian, "illustrated guide to hunting crime") builds it around a portrait. Shen Yi (沈翊, played by Tan Jianci, 檀健次) is a painter who can recreate a face with total accuracy, and the series asks what a face, and the person drawing it, can give away.
It aired in March 2022, and Guangming Online later described it as the opening shot of that year's suspense-crime season. In an April 2022 review, the site reported that the iQIYI heat index had passed 8,926 by the finale and that Tencent Video showed about 1.3 billion views. Its reviewer singled out the polish: careful framing, a considered color palette and oil paintings used as visual metaphors, rare in a genre that usually settles for grey corridors.
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Seven years before the main action, Shen Yi is an art student sketching on the street. A stranger asks him to draw how a child in a photograph might look as an adult. The picture is later connected to the death of an undercover officer, and Shen Yi cannot recall the face of the woman who asked for it.
In the present, Shen Yi joins the Beijiang district police bureau as a sketch artist. His new partner is the squad captain Du Cheng (杜城, Jin Shijia, 金世佳), whose mentor was the dead officer and who has not forgiven him. The two are made to work side by side.
Together they take on a series of strange cases, and the unresolved matter from seven years earlier runs underneath them.
The story is set in the present day, in the Beijiang district. Filming began in Xiamen in March 2021 and wrapped that June. The series was made by Lemon Tree Pictures (柠萌影业) with iQIYI and directed by Xing Jianjun (邢键钧), with Jia Dongyan (贾东岩) as head writer.
The Guangming Online review credited the success to its mix of genres, an unusual viewpoint and its link to social issues, and described its approach as "warm realism". It also named the weaknesses: concentrating on the artist's point of view loosens the suspense, and the many social themes are handled only lightly.
A second season, Under the Skin II (猎罪图鉴2), followed in December 2024 with 28 episodes and new writers and directors. A review in The Paper noted that it kept the first season's tone, and also that its clues can feel forced and its psychology shallow.
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