KINGDOM

                                          Kingdom: Netflix's Dark Political Drama.

The deceased king rises and a mysterious plague begins to spread; the prince must face a new breed of enemies to unveil the evil scheme and save his people.

Netflix deciding to take a gander on a Korean Political drama is bold, however deciding to tell a different story from the norm is just pure brilliant. As we have come to agree, Netflix have a thing with rolling out dark contents, and this is another one of those ventures. Being based on The land of the gods, this show ought to have been a straight forward political drama, perhaps involving one conflict point as with the usual Korean narrative of these historic political thrillers. However this show took a different approach to the norm and brought it home with class. This is perhaps the most obvious reason why you should see this show, as it has both drama, good swordplay and intense suspense; as expected of a Korean history classic.

Talking about the concept, it's partly original and half unoriginal. The concept of the show is derived wholly from The Land of the gods, at least the political aspect of the show, while the creative minds at Netflix sought to offer up a little bit of Originality by incorporating a new conflict element; the undead. It's amazing and it worked wonders by making the show keep its lustre for the entirety of a surprisingly short first season. We think it was a good choice because as with most Korean tv dramas, they can get quite boring and slow when the principal conflict dies down a bit or when some episodes focus on aspects of the show not connected with the principal theme. Here however, the show had enough content to keep it going at a very high pace setting,  and not a moment to bore viewers.
Although, the origin of the conflict may not have been as iconic as we wanted it, it's reveal was an even more anti-climactic occurrence and could maybe have been handled in a better fashion. But we agree that the show really does have a lot of concept upon which it will thrive. The dualisation of the conflict is just marvelous, as it has offered the show runners the room to manoeuvre with the content. In fact, the concept the show has to work with is so perfect that the show runners don't know or haven't even decided what the principal conflict is and what should be the subordinate conflict element. This is amazing. The political aspect of the conflict is intriguing while the Undead (Zombies) aspect offers much more pace and exhilaration, while also offering a lot of beautiful zombie slaying and flesh gnawing action. Its just amazing what they have managed to achieve with this show, and it's Korean. Much has been said about the inability of Korean shows to properly capture villainy. But here quite assured in his role is a villain who is not only ruthless in scheming evil machinations, but also quite evil in his appearance. It is the perfect blend of what is expected of a villain.

 Costuming is another positive for this show. It is on the aesthetic side of things and not over elaborated as was the case with the legendary Jumong show of yore. The show runners and the men behind it all at Netflix have done incredible work with scripting, casting, location and creativity to deliver a show worthy of its hype.

  On the acting side, the actors cast have been working as though they were the elites of the industry, but that should come as no surprise seeing as Netflix always know how to get their casting right. Moreover, we should not be too quick to forget the impact of good scripting on character performances and should thus accord the team a perfect score for idea and execution. Due to its incredible scripting, the length of the show is never an issue.

The first season of the show ended on a high and on a very brilliant premise. For one, the notion that the Undead slept at day is a total misconception and as a result the heroes have a huge fight on their hands. There is also the realisation that Ahn Hyeon may actually be hiding a much darker secret than he is letting on, and this could truly bode very badly for the heroes, as they may soon be sandwiched between 3 converging forces.
This sets the show for an amazing second season and we recommend that before the second season airs our readers should make the effort to pick this first season and have a jolly ride with it. This is a good show fraught with very minimal irregularities and resplendent with a whole lot of creativity and most importantly a lot of potential going forward.

Based on: The Land of the Gods by Kim Eun-hee and Yang Kyung-il[2]
Written by: Kim Eun-hee
Directed by: Kim Seong-hun
Starring:
Ju Ji-hoon
Bae Doona
Ryu Seung-ryon

FCA's AppR: 8.3 /10