(TV SERIES) The Manipulated - Action Heavy, Revenge Driven Series with Interesting Premise

This series was already released on Disney+ since early November 2025, but as usual, I would only start watching when it was completed. My wife on the other hand, decided to watch it several days before the final episode was available on 3rd of December cause she is a major fan of the lead cast. And after finishing it few days ago, she strongly recommended that I watch the series, which I obliged by starting yesterday and finished it today. Without further ado, here's more on the series.

Brief Story Line (warning possible spoiler!)

Park Tae-joong (Ji Chang-wook - Revolver, Gangnam B-Side TV series etc) was just an ordinary man who worked hard as delivery guy. Unfortunately his life was destroyed when he was caught for a crime he did not commit. Due to irrefutable evidence, Tae-joong was found guilty and sentenced to prison. Life in jail was unbearable for him until he met with the kind-hearted Noh Yong-sik (Kim Jong-soo -Smugglers, Start-Up etc). But when Tae-joong somehow found out that the evidence against him was fabricated, he immediately devised a plan for revenge with the help from Yong-sik and later his daughter Eun-bi (Jo Yoon-su - The Tyrant mini series, The Interest of Love TV series etc).

Meanwhile the person responsible for framing Tae-joong was the young CEO of security company named An Yo-han (Doh Kyung-soo - The Moon, 100 Days My Prince TV series etc) who was doing the service for Baek Do-kyoung (Lee Kwang-soo - Karma TV series, A Year-end Medley etc), the son of wealthy politican. 

So would Tae-joong be able to wreak vengeance against all the people who ruined his life? And how would the story conclude? You could find out in this series. 

End of Brief Story Line

Wow that was just amazing! I really must thank my wife who once again was spot on in recommending a series that I would loved. And this one was something that I truly enjoyed. It was a series that has very interesting premise with lots of well executed action sequence. Although the fabrication of evidence and the plan that Tae-joong devised was pretty sophisticated, the story itself was not very complicated and quite easy to understand. In a nutshell, this is a revenge story where we totally root for the lead character and really despise the antagonist.

I read on the internet that the story was based on the movie Fabricated City that was co-written by Oh Sang-ho who was the writer of this series. After re-reading my post about the film that my wife and I saw 8 years ago, I found similarities only on the premise whereby the lead character (also Ji Chang-wook) was framed for crime he did not commit, but the back story were completely different. Obviously there were more time to explore various things in a series that could not have been done in a movie that has way shorter duration. However if I got to be honest, even though the series was really exciting, sometimes there were parts that felt a bit diverting from the main plot of revenge. The 5th and 6th episodes were example of those, albeit good distraction due to the high octane action sequence. Fortunately the series only had 12 episodes and each episode was just around 47 minutes long including opening & closing credit scenes. Hence it was not that difficult to complete them if you are concentrating enough.

Now the cast in general were pretty excellent. Ji Chang-wook's characterization of a man who started off as naive and kind-hearted to bitter and full of rage was quite awesome. Meanwhile his counter part Doh Kyung-soo was equally amazing with so many moments where he could be so convincing as psychotic person. In addition there were a lot of important support characters such as the prison gang leader Yeo Deok-su (Yang Dong-geun - Connect TV series, Mantis etc) who always bullied Tae-joong, prison officer Yang Chul-hwan (Kim Jae-chul - Exhuma, Love Your Enemy TV series etc), Detective Hwang Il-guk (Lee Sung-woo - Squid Game TV series season 2 & 3 etc), Yo-han's nanny (Jeong In-gi - Pachinko TV series etc), Deok-su's rival Do Gang-jae (Eum Moon-suk - 6/45, Arthdal Chronicles TV series etc) and appearances by recurring cast whom my wife mostly recognized. 

The strength of the series aside from its cast performance and the story, was definitely the action scenes. I felt they were really well done and have strong Hollywood feel. The car race (seemed to be inspired by Mad Max or Death Race) was wonderful despite the abrupt ending, while the part in episode 3 was brilliant, and that motorcycle/car chase in episode 11 was just fantastic. There were also plenty of entertaining fist fights using various weapons Btw, the series itself had very dark tone with only very few brief lighter moments usually involving Eun-bi. Now the ending to me was satisfying even if it might be a bit too simple. Oh before I forgot, there was a rather intriguing scene towards the very end. 

So if you are in the mood for an action heavy, revenge driven series with interesting premise, then you would definitely enjoy this series like my wife and I did. It seemed to be well-liked by audience too as it made to the top charts in various countries including Indonesia. Aside from few minor things that I thought could have been done slightly better like the way Tae-joong's body could withstand so much torture, or the condition of the nanny that I thought did not make sense and the overly simplistic conclusion, overall this was definitely an entertaining series. Have fund watching!

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars