Should you start Netflix's The Scandal this weekend
Netflix's The Scandal opened at No. 7 among non-English shows. Korean viewers have been cooler on the eight-episode Joseon remake of Dangerous Liaisons. Here is who the weekend is for.
Mina Park
The Scandal has been on Netflix since September 18. Three days in, it sat at No. 7 among non-English shows, with 1.9 million views.
Korean viewers have been less sold. A week later, the complaint you keep hearing is that the middle sags.
Lady Cho writes her cousin a wager. Cho Won takes it. Hui-yeon, a young widow, is who they point at. If you know Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's 1782 novel Dangerous Liaisons, you already know the kind of trouble a bet like that makes.
Son Ye-jin plays Lady Cho. Crash Landing on You is still how a lot of people found her, and this is her first Joseon series in more than twenty years. She looks like she has been waiting for a room this controlled.
Ji Chang-wook is Cho Won. Healer people will know the walk, just colder.
Nana, who broke out in Mask Girl, plays Hui-yeon in her first sageuk. She is the person the bet is built to crack.
Jung Ji-woo, the director of Tune in for Love, is remaking a story Korea already filmed. Untold Scandal, E J-yong's 2003 movie with Bae Yong-joon and Jeon Do-yeon, did this wager in two hours and sold more than 3.5 million tickets.
Eight episodes give Jung space for childhood letters, side lives, and more time between Lady Cho and Hui-yeon. A lot of people in Korea have been saying that extra length is where the temperature drops.
Bukchon, the old scholar-official quarter, sits in the frame like a painting, and the hanbok matches that mood. The TV-MA sex scenes are the other fight: whether they grow out of the story or just show up.
All eight episodes are up. Netflix lists about seven hours and 45 minutes. Block a weekend if you start.
Our take: press play if you want Son Ye-jin running a costume drama she has not done on television since the early 2000s, and you do not mind a remake that takes its time. If you want it shorter, Untold Scandal already did the wager in two hours.
