[News] Ito Hideaki & Sakaguchi Kenji to team up as detectives in new drama ‘Doubles’.

[News] Ito Hideaki & Sakaguchi Kenji to team up as detectives in new drama ‘Doubles’.
Cr. - tokyohive

On February 22, TV Asahi announced that the two actors Ito Hideaki and Sakaguchi Kenji will co-star in the upcoming detective drama titled ‘Doubles‘.

10 years has passed since Ito and Sakaguchi last starred together in a project and in ‘Doubles’ they are going to deal with heinous crimes as the strongest detective partners on TV. The drama is set at the central police station in Shinjuku, Tokyo and said to feature plenty of action, drama and comedy.

Both actors have already been portraying strong and ‘fighting men’ in their trademark series ‘Umizaru‘ and ‘Iryu‘, respectively. The last time they actually co-starred together was in the 2002 drama ‘Tentai Kansoku‘ (Fuji TV). This time they are playing hot-blooded and righteous detectives who fight against increasing number of heinous crimes in Shinjuku.

Ito is portraying a thoughtless detective named ‘Yamashita Shunsuke’ who doesn’t seem to care about the minor details when being on a case. Sakaguchi is playing a more serious and more hot-blooded kind of detective named ‘Tashiro Keiichi’. Their actions and opinions are often clashing with each other, but despite those disputes they always end up cooperating in order to solve all the different cases.

Ito commented, “Kenji and I are of the same age, but when we worked together 10 years ago, we were still in our twenties. Back then we sort of tried to keep each other in check and weren’t able to be all that upfront with each other. Now we get the chance to work together again at the end of our thirties, and with that part between us gone, I’d like us to create a great drama together.”

He continued, “My character will do a lot of action, handle guns and catch a lot of those small details related to a case. I want to create a character that even the very young viewers will admire and think of as ‘cool’. There have been many detective dramas already, but I hope the two of us will be able to leave our mark with this new detective series.”

Sakaguchi stated, “I’m looking forward to work together with Hideaki again after 10 years. Moreover it’s going to be a detective drama! I’m really happy since we boys love detective dramas (laughs) I want to try my best as long as my physical strength lets me to.”

He continued, “In our twenties, I strongly felt of Hideaki as my rival. I absolutely couldn’t lose to him and observed him all the time, but right now I can only think about how nice it will be to create a great drama by joining our forces. I want us to build a duo that people simply won’t be able to hate, although they always act recklessly.”

The story follows detective Yamashita and Tashiro as they get transferred to a new special unit of the very best detectives that operate from the station in Shinjuku. This new unit is often being referred to as ‘Section 0′.

‘Doubles’ is written by Ozaki Masaya (‘Umechan Sensei’) and TV Asahi is going to air this drama every Thursday at 9:00 pm starting in April.