Netflix’s bruising new crime thriller follows a deadly trail of corruption on the Top 10 in 85 nations

Courtesy of Netfilx ©2023

Crime thrillers have been the bread-and-butter of episodic storytelling for decades, but the quantity often tends to outweigh the quality. That being said, Netflix has been delivering a consistent string of hard-boiled cops and robbers tales for a while now, and the success of Sleeping Dog intimates that subscribers are going to keep eating them up.

Per FlixPatrol, the German-language series has debuted as the second top-viewed episodic title on the entire platform after securing a Top 10 spot in 85 countries since premiering yesterday, with only the sixth season of cultural juggernaut Black Mirror denying it a place at the very summit.

The labyrinthine mystery at the center is an engaging one, too, with a disgraced police officer and a wide-eyed young prosecutor deciding to crack open a cold case for very different reasons. Naturally, upon doing so the bodies begin piling up all over again, with evidence mounting that the conspiracy reaches up to the highest levels of both the judiciary and law enforcement, while a terrorist attack that occurred 18 months prior also becoming re-established as a key piece of the puzzle.

Needless to say, there are a lot of twists and turns before a resolution is reached, although it’s clearly a ride Netflix users are eager to strap in and go along for looking at how Sleeping Dog has instantaneously conquered the most-watched rankings around the world. It feels like we get a new addition to the subgenre every week on the platform, but it’s hard to call that a bad thing when so many of them prove to be easily bingeable.

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Scott Campbell

News, reviews, interviews. To paraphrase Keanu Reeves; Words. Lots of words.