So it's time for me to rave about another show I enjoyed. Shining Girls was one of those things that didn't seem particularly interesting to me in theory, but really surprised me with how different it was. I'm not the biggest fan of crime dramas, or at least I don't have much interest in a lot of the popular ones. There have been a few that have stood out to me over the years and it's usually because they manage to do something interesting. Shining Girls is definitely that kind of show.
The series is centred around a woman who, in the wake of a brutal attack, finds that her reality has become altered. Things around her change randomly from one day to the next from something as small as what desk she has at work to something as dramatic as discovering a partner at home that she's never even dated. She's the only one aware of the changes that are happening. As far as everyone else is concerned these things have always been that way. Then the body of a woman turns up with similar wounds to the ones she sustained in her own attack, and she sees a chance to finally track down her attacker and maybe get some answers as to what's really going on.
I think that makes this show a bit different from the rest is that the mystery isn't about who the killer is, as you're shown at the very beginning, but how he's doing what he's doing. It leads you in all sorts of directions, raises just as many questions as it answers, and leaves you with plenty to ponder. It's also interesting that by having access to more information than the characters, and knowing what the killer's next move was, I actually found some of those tense moments even more suspenseful. Not to mention how good it felt when a vital piece of evidence was uncovered, even if it was information that I as a member of the audience was already privy to. In short it was tense, thought provoking, and utterly engrossing.
