3/5 stars
Lead cast: Ryu Jun-yeol, Chun Woo-hee, Park Jung-min, Lee Joo-yong
Squid Game 2 isn’t due until later this year, but for those who really cannot wait any longer, The 8 Show, Netflix’s latest original series from South Korea, should go a long way towards scratching that itch.
Ryu plays Bae Jin-su, a nod to the author of the Money Game web comic, Bae Jin-soo, on which this series is loosely based. Jin-su, the audience surrogate of the group – and the only character whose name is revealed – is a youth whose meagre dreams have died under the weight of crushing debt.
He is contemplating the ultimate escape when a limousine pulls up and whisks him off to a secret location, where he is given the choice of taking a stack of cash or picking a numbered card and stepping through a velvet curtain to play a game that could earn him a lot more.
With nothing left to lose he opts for the latter, and so the “8 Show” begins.
Eight strangers have been brought into a large square room from which they cannot escape until the game is over. Off a red staircase that zigzags up one wall of the space, each has their own room.
These otherwise bare rooms feature counters showing their prize money, which grows by the minute, and a phone which they can use to order whatever they need, but at 100 times the market price.
The main room has a counter too, and as long as it does not run down to zero the game continues. As the contestants soon learn, the only way to add more time to this counter is to entertain the people watching them via the dozens of cameras that rob them of the least bit of privacy.
As the days go by, the hidden audience grows bored and becomes harder to entertain, and, as Park Jung-min’s character 7th Floor realises, there are some lines that, once crossed, cannot be uncrossed.
We learn the rules of this high-concept game in dribs and drabs, just as the characters do, which is part of the fun; no one is quite clear about what’s going on, which makes it hard to predict what will happen next – although it is safe to say that things do not turn out well for the players.
While a lot of Korean genre content that has appeared in the wake of Squid Game has been compared to it unfairly, with this show the parallels feel deliberate. Violent games happen within the game, contestants wear uniforms, and the production design is colourful and zany.
Every part of the series, down to its clear metaphors about social inequality, is cut from the same stone. Squid Game isn’t even the only Netflix hit that The 8 Show mimics.
Unfortunately, other than 2nd Floor, the female characters are disappointingly written. Their behaviour is manic and unstable, while the men tend to remain rational.
The 8 Show is very stylish and makes for compulsive viewing, thanks to its brutal stakes and constant surprises, but it all falls apart if you think about it too hard.
The logic of the game does not stand up to scrutiny – there are several obvious solutions to the challenges faced by the contestants – and the story’s social allusions feel superficial and hypocritical.
Viewers are likely to recognise The 8 Show as a blatant attempt to piggyback on the achievement of the most successful Netflix show of all time, but so long as they are being entertained they may give it more time.
The 8 Show is streaming on Netflix.