Abe Hiroshi & Kagawa Teruyuki to work together in NHK drama "Sniffer Kyuukaku Sousakan"

Abe Hiroshi and Kagawa Teruyuki will be working together in the new NHK drama "Sniffer Kyuukaku Sousakan" (Sniffer The investigation officer with a sense of smell) which will begin its run from 22 October in the Saturdays 10pm timeslot. The drama is based on the 2013 Ukranian drama "THE SNIFFER" which achieved the highest drama ratings in Russia within the last five years, had been shown in more than 60 countries and won many awards at various TV drama festivals overseas. The Japanese remake version will feature new cases and characters which do not appear in the original.

Abe plays the role of Hanaoka Shinichiro, a police detective nicknamed Sniffer who relies on his strong sense of smell to solve cases while Kagawa plays his buddy Komukai Tatsuro who works with him to solve strange and difficult cases. Abe commented that he is in the midst of thinking of how to project his character who relies on his nose to conduct the investigation and he hopes to make this drama as interesting as possible. Although the Japanese version is a remake, he also hopes to make it as good as, if not better than the original even though it is going to be challenging. As for Kagawa, he jokingly said that the selling point of this drama is that Abe is going to be like a police dog who has a good sense of smell and can speak words like a human being who can solve cases quickly. Just imagining Abe going around sniffing like a police dog is bound to be hillarious and somewhat not in line with NHK's usual serious image but that is precisely the charming point of this drama.

Co-stars include Igawa Haruka who plays Suenaga Yuki, an otolaryngologist who is secretly in love with Hanaoka, Itaya Yuka who plays Katayama Emi, Hanaoka's ex-wife and Yoshiyuki Kazuko who plays Komukai's mother and is an original character in the Japanese version. There will be guest stars in each episode.

Filming begins from the end of July to October in the Kanto area.

Source: Oricon