Yesterday I finished watching the South Korean TV drama Kingdom. Now before you start rolling your eyes, let me just say that it’s not your typical South Korean show, not just because it is labeled as Netflix’s original. Kingdom is actually a zombie series set in a historical Korean setting that gives you all the chills of a scary movie as well as all the thrills of an action-pact sword-fighting flick. It’s attention-grabbing and nail-chewing and has impacted me enough that I want to write all about it.

The series is centered around a young prince who has to deal with all the politics of Machiavellian king’s court as people around him fight for power and survival. On top of that, there is a zombie pandemic and he has to fight that as well.

The series starts somewhat slow. The young prince tries to contact his ailing father but is prevented from seeing him by the queen’s orders. The queen is his step-mother and is late in pregnancy as she is supposed to deliver a baby boy, the next king. The king’s absence is highly mysterious and troubling. So, the young prince tries to find out what is going on. In this quest, he runs into situations that might cost him his life and the lives of everyone in the whole country.

It’s a zombie series all right, but you will not find many things in Kingdom that had me frustrated with shows like Walking Dead. For one, zombies do not move in slow-motion. Unlike Walking Dead where their turtle speed would, by all logic, allow a few swordsmen to cut through thousands of them with no much trouble and end the whole apocalypse with not much trouble, here they move with the speed of crazed beasts who crave for human blood and flesh.

Some might say, what are you doing looking for logic if you watch a zombie movie, but that is beside the point. A lot of elements in Sci-Fi and Fantasy might seem impossible, but still, I want to see that there is some logic behind them. I mean, who could ever think there could ever be transporters in Star Trek or dragons or wizards? That’s not what is at issue here. The issue here is what is made believable to me. It’s just my own preference. I like sci-fi and fantasy that, even though it might not be possible or probable, is still believable enough to be presentable and watchable. Really, talking about Walking Dead, I mean, nobody can convince me that hundreds of thousands could die in a single battle during the modern-day warfare, yet, the modern military could not take down the army of slow-moving zombies.

The good point about Kingdom is that you will not find such illogical elements here, and I appreciate that. The way they fight zombies seems how it could really happen if such a scenario was ever to occur.



Now, I will not debate here how likely it is of a zombie apocalypse ever happens. That would be just stupid. But I like that the screen-writer, Kim Eun-bee, at least tried to explain the story and make it as believable as it might possibly be done. I really appreciate that she did not decide to violate and rape my sense of logic.



But really, is Kingdom worth watching? For me, it definitely is, and for more reasons than one. First of all, I love samurai-style shows and there is certainly enough sword-action in Kingdom to warrant watching it. It is also a very unpredictable series with many intense scenes, keeping the suspense to the max. You just do not know who will live and who will die, and on many parts, I have to wonder if not everyone might die, including the main characters. That great unpredictability carries a high grade in my book.





Also, the cinematography is just breath-taking, from the scenes of nature to the castles and costumes. Even old towns and villages are done really well with a lot of details. I just have to say that it’s eye-candy for anyone enjoying historical settings.



Yes, I have to re-emphasize that I really liked its historical elements. The show portraits Korea during its Joseon period, at the close of 16th century. So, if you are careful enough watching the show, you can really get a taste of what it was like to live in Korea during tough historical times and how their king’s court was organized and run. You can definitely get the sense of how different Korean court was from the kings’ courts in the West, yet how it was all the same, with a constant power-grabbing and back-stabbing.



Even though done by Netflix, I definitely appreciated its unorthodox style. I mean, this is not a classical Hollywood production where a bad guy and a good guy get to sort things out at the end of the show. Nor is it a typical Chinese show where everyone must die. This originality is quite refreshing in a world where everything is just being copied and duplicated.

Now, you can watch the series with English dubbing, but even though I do not understand a word of Korean, I chose to listen to the show in the original language and read the subtitles. It just adds to the originality for me. I also chose to watch it at night which added an extra sense of ambient for the murky nature of the show itself. At twelve episodes between two seasons, it is not too long as the scenes are not stretched needlessly with useless dialogs.



Equally appealing, on many occasions during the watching of the show, I was pleasantly reminded of the things I liked about Game of Thorns even as it lacked its grandeur or crazy tension-crescendoing progress.



The bottom line is that this is by far my favorite zombie TV series, and I hope Netflix can find it in their hearts and minds to continue producing it. From what was offered at the end of season 2, season 3 might just be the best yet.