Well, a lot of people filled their boots with the Shipwrecked post, didn’t they? Learning nothing from that runaway success,
this week I’m veering recklessly to the other end of the TV spectrum. We’ve not chatted about my love for zombies
since both The Walking Dead and Fear The Walking Dead (the latter a spin-off
of the former) were subjected to my sardonic snarkiness months and months ago. So, brace yourself for the flesh-eating
undead. But that’s not the only swap we’ve
made. Replace a Pacific Island with the
Korean peninsula. Switch bikini-clab
British Millennials for medieval Koreans.
And sub inarticulate youths saying “you know, kind of like” for a violent
onslaught from the Korean language, with subtitles straight out of the How To
Speak Archaic English textbook and, ladies and gentlemen, you’ve got yourself Kingdom.
But, as always, due to a grave inability to take anything
seriously, I jest. Kingdom is literally
the best thing I have seen on Netflix
in ages. I’m not even sorry about
writing such a weak sentence as that previous one – it doesn’t need dressing
up. I’m still in a state of excitement,
and I finished all six episodes about a week ago. I’m looking at the clock as if it’s going to
tell me when series two will come into my life and provide me with equal
measures of horror and entertainment.
Let’s be honest, I get both of these in my office, but very little of
this comes from historical Koreans, so it’s nice to have a change, isn’t it?
The bit where I tell you what it’s all about will now
follow, but again, we’re going for a certain laziness of language, as the rest
is verging on highbrow (historical, foreign language) and we need to average
things out to keep the majority happy.
So, there’s this prince, right?
His dad, the king, is on his deathbed, yeah, but the prince is being
kept away by the new queen, his stepmother.
She’s expecting a baby by the old king, so she needs her husband to
survive until the birth in order to secure succession. She’s part of a clan who are hungry for
power, so let’s just say there’s a rather Westerosi approach to this whole
throne ownership business. Her clan’s
devious attempts to keep the king alive are what cause the inevitable zombie
outbreak, while dismissing a physician back into the countryside is what
spreads the pestilence to the peasants beyond the palace. Meanwhile, our poor old prince also has to
flee for his life on a quest to find out the truth. He’s about to find out it’s not so easy being
a prince in zombie-riddle medieval Korea.
What sets this apart, though, is bloody all of it. But let’s distil from this two of the main
TV-viewing features upon which you can feast your eyes. The first is that every shot is exquisitely
cinematic in its beauty. From ancient
palace buildings to dramatic landscapes, the visuals’ lushness is exceeded only
by the ancient costumes. You’ll wonder
who ever thought those big hats were practical for soldiers, or question how
warm so many layers of silk can be, but you’ll always end up impressed. Somehow, this aesthetic doesn’t distract from
the drama; instead, it becomes the perfect frame for the zombie fare, which
often needs further theming to become plausible. Having been to modern South Korea, I’m not
sure the impact would have been the same among the grey buildings of Seoul,
evidence of the whole place getting smashed in during the 1950s’ Korean War.
The second main setter-aparter is the incredible dramatic
tension. A zombie origin story is always
fraught, as you, the viewer, sprawled on your cushions and shoving snacks in
your face, know full well that doom is due while the characters all too slowly
put two and two together and come up with some sort of denial of the epidemic chasing
them down country lanes (yes, these zombies run, fast). Skip this bit if you don’t want any spoiler content
whatsoever, but one element of the zombie mythology in Kingdom has to be
mentioned: the undead are only active in the dark. Cue limitless possibilities of the sun
setting, corpses starting to twitch, silly Korean magistrates being inefficient
in their jobs and all hell being unleashed.
Conversely, you know your beloved main characters just have to survive
each night before the daytime brings a bit of a breather. A whole episode got so tense, the build and
build to nightfall so domineering, that I had to press pause and pace about the
room a bit to restore all sense of perspective to myself.
Alongside all of this, Kingdom finds time to make
comparisons between the haves and have nots in society: a sort of socialist
message to accompany the consumption of flesh, if you will. The nobility are repeatedly shown to cock up
their handling of an issue of national importance, while our royal hero, the
prince, also learns that the peasant fodder bearing the brunt of the
infestation don’t actually deserve to be eaten alive. It’s funny how Brexit bleeds into everything,
isn’t it? (Or is that a bit of a reach
this time?) It seems that any dishonour
towards a royal, however, does come with the alarming punishment of one’s whole
family being annihilated. What a great
way to target crime. The next time
someone swipes your iPhone on a moped, you can rest assured that they won’t
just be found and jailed, they won’t just be executed, but their whole family
tree will be erased from the earth.
I’ll finish by saying that I don’t care if you don’t like
subtitles. You should have tried harder
at school if you can’t read fast enough.
Stepping outside of the English language into Kingdom allows you to
access one of the most compelling additions to the zombie canon in quite a few
years. Sure, it’s based on a comic book,
like The Walking Dead etc, but it’s set apart by its uniqueness in the Western
TV marketplace. It’s also endlessly
gratifying to watch the various extras really go for it in their performances
and energetically give something extra of themselves, become extra extras. Just remember, don’t come for me when you
reach the cliffhanging end of series one, because it was me who opened your
tiny mind to the intense tension of Kingdom.
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