Game of Thrones meets the Joseon Dynasty in Kingdom, Netflix's Korean original drama series

In medieval Joseon-era Korea, a mysterious illness befalls the King. No one is allowed to see him after he takes to his bed, except for his young wife — the Queen — and her father, the Minister Cho Hak-ju (widely considered the real force behind the throne).

The Crown Prince — the King’s only offspring, although illegitimate — is desperate to meet with his father and nurse him through his illness. But the Prince is a prisoner in his own palace.

Within the heavily guarded royal complex in the capital city of Hanyang (present-day Seoul), nothing moves without the express knowledge (and permission) of the Queen and Cho Hak-ju. And they’re hiding a secret that could not only trigger a power struggle for the crown, but also cause the deaths of thousands of people.

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This is the premise of Kingdom — Netflix’s recent Korean original drama series. Its first season, which released at the end of January on the streaming service, is as pitch-perfect as you’d want a TV series to be. Imagine a mash-up of the Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead set in a sumptuous period of Korea’s history, and you have Kingdom.

Poster for Kingdom. Netflix

As the preceding sentence may have made clear, the secret the Queen and Cho Hak-ju are hiding involves zombies; not the slow, shuffling, Romero’s Rules-following zombies of The Walking Dead, but the speedy ones from Train To Busan. The King is “patient zero” — zombified as the result of a resurrection-cure-gone-wrong after he dies from natural causes. The pregnant Queen needs the King to "live" until she gives birth to his son and heir (who can then replace the “bastard-born” Crown Prince). Cho Hak-ju needs his own grandson sit on the throne so his hold over the kingdom is cemented. They call in a physician to resuscitate the King at any cost, and then must keep his reanimated zombie self a secret from the rest of the court.

But zombie epidemics — as pop culture has taught us — have a way of spreading. And so it is with this one as well. The King infects the physician’s young apprentice. When the physician takes the boy’s corpse home, far from the capital, nearly everyone at his infirmary — patients, their families, nurses — is affected.

Meanwhile, the Crown Prince is on the trail of the physician, attempting to find out what has happened to his father. He flees from the court under suspicion of plotting treason with the nation’s scholars. The army is on his trail, when he encounters the zombie hordes. Chaos ensues, but he has the support of his trusted guard Moo-Young and others he gathers on the trail — the sole surviving nurse from the infirmary, a secretive villager who came there for treatment but triggered the epidemic, and an ineffectual district magistrate.

You will never again be satisfied with a regular zombie apocalypse-themed TV series or movie after watching Kingdom. The zombies are horrifying, sure, but the regal costumes, stunning landscapes, a feudal society, and palace intrigue are what make this an irresistible binge-watch.

Read on Firstpost: The zombie invasion of pop culture is complete

At times, the Game of Thrones vibe can be hard to shake off: the Queen and Cho Hak-ju are the equivalent of Cersei and Tywin Lannister — the father instructing his daughter on the nature of power and how to hold on to it; the Crown Prince (noble, idealistic) is Jon Snow; the zombie horde he’s fighting is like the Army of the Dead; in Moo-Young he has his very own Samwell Tarly. (The other characters are not as well-etched as these four — a lack that season two should be able to address.) There’s enough scheming, plotting and politicking to make up for the lack of a Night King-like nemesis and dragons. There’s even a decidedly Ramin Djawadi-like feel to some of the background score.

That said, Kingdom is its own creature. Based on the web-comic Land of the Gods by Kim Eun-hee (who also scripts the TV series), Kingdom is able to capture the highs and lows of the Joseon Dynasty. On the one hand, you have all the markers of a rich, flourishing culture. On the other, you have a kingdom caught between the ideals of the pacifism it has espoused so far (as embodied in the young scholars and their leader, the Crown Prince) and the harsh militarism advocated by the General. The General’s stance receives some support after the nation suffers repeated incursions from Japan and Machuria; the old ways, it is felt, will not protect the kingdom any more.

Within the country, famine has decimated swathes of the population; it is whispered that those who survived, did so by eating the flesh of the dead. The zombie epidemic in this case, is the exaggeration of a nightmarish reality. Feudalism is so deeply entrenched that we see its effects in nearly every other scene — the extreme obsequiousness shown to higher-ups, the differing values placed on human beings (in life and in death), the insurmountable disparities in standards of living, the endemic corruption. These observations and nuances are not force-fit into the narrative, instead, the story flows from these details. Tying all of this together is some of the lushest cinematography you’re likely to see on the small screen.

With over a month to go for the premiere of Game of Thrones’ eighth and final season, and The Walking Dead stuck in a morass of its own making, Kingdom could be just what you need to fill in the gap. Scratch that; watch Kingdom anyway.

Rating: ★★★★

Kingdom is currently streaming on Netflix. Watch the trailer here: