Anyone here remember how Clive James used to show excerpts from a Japanese show called Endurance all those years ago? Despite provoking equal parts disgusted bemusement and amusement (“Aren’t those Johnny foreigners jolly strange!”), huge numbers of UK viewers now happily sit down and watch I’m a Celebrity.
Remember at the time critics pointing out that people were quickly going to get bored simply watching contestants being humiliated. The logical end product was a show in which one or more of those taking part wound up having to die for the entertainment of the folks at home.
A sort of bastard love child of Endurance, Battle Royale, Takeshi’s Castle, Lost, Hunger Games and the Prisoner, Netflix’s new Squid Game is that show.
Currently halfway through series/season one and gob-smackingly good it is, too.
Without giving too much of the game (no pun intended!) away, the show is about a bunch of heavily in debt South Koreans who are offered the chance to take part in a series of contests with a brobdingnagian cash prize for the winner.
The contests – kids party games like statues (known as red light, green light in Korea) are simple enough. The problem is, you fuck up and you die.
Recent years have seen Korea produce some fabulous satire (Parasite) and horror movies (Train to Busan, one of whose stars, Gong Yoo, puts in an early cameo appearance here). If you love those the chances are you’ll love this, too.
A bastard love child with a wonderfully mixed parentage. Wonderful description!
You make me very curious
I have it on my list to watch, Jay. Might move it up to the top of the queue…
Started it the other day and I’m hooked now. Intrigued about where it’s going to lead.
We are watching it now like the rest of the world. It grabbed me initially but I lost a bit of interest. My wife however loves it and accuses me of “not investing.”
I was talking to a classroom assistent at my daughter’s school, @Jaygee about the rise of South Korean culture.
Guess which new game he had heard has arrived in the schoolyard!
https://thecanadian.news/2021/10/21/reports-of-children-imitating-the-squid-game-alarm-quebec-parents-and-schools-the-canadian-news/
We genuinely used to play “Cowboys and Indians” or “Cops and Robbers”. Lots of shooting guns and people dying, going “aaargh!” usually while gripping your heart.
In every single game a “dead” person would spring up again, all “guns” blazing – claiming to have been wearing a bulletproof vest all along.
Top five playground gun noises:
1. Peeeyowwww! (cowboy gun with ricochet)
2. Dugga dugga dugga (anti aircraft)
3. Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh (machine gun)
4. Ptchooo! (sniper)
5. BEEEEYOOOOO (ray-gun)
It is good, but almost unbearably brutal.
I watched the final episode last night. Pleased with the ending- it went to some unexpected places, not least tonsorial. The only thing I disliked were the “VIPs” – they were poorly scripted. Some really tense moments and I grew to like the main characters.