SQUID GAME( 2021)

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I don’t think there has ever been a TV show quite like Squid Game, a violent , dark , occasionally racist, funny, emotional and just about everything else in ten episodes of extraordinary South Korean television , via Netflix. Some people bailed on it after the first gruesome episode (women) whilst most stuck with it to the likewise end (blokes and teenagers). As much as you know its acting and TV drama with pretend blood and camp acting it seems to resonate emotionally on so many levels, especially for an older audience. This is proper hardcore TV. The basic premise is a big group of adults living in South Korea, waylaid with debt and family problems are tricked into playing a deadly series of games in a secret hidden location to get the chance to clear those debts, huge cash prizes waiting for the winner(s). Drugged and transported in the dead of the night they arrive at the remote location, the players waking up from their sedation dressed in numbered tracksuits from 1 to 456 in a huge dorm and having no idea where they are, or what’s coming next, the outside world oblivious to what they are about to go through. Number 1 badge is an old man with a brain tumour, O Yeong-su (Oh Il-nam), whilst number 456, the final one to sign up, is Seong Gi-hun ( Lee Jung-jae), a simpleton chauffeur and gambling addict. A beautiful young and feisty North Korean defector, Cho Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo), is the female eye candy whilst conceited banker Kang Sae-byeok (HoYeon Jung) is the brains of the contestants. Heo Sung-tae (Jang Deok-su) is the tattooed villain of the piece, a nasty gangster who needs the money to escape another gangster, everyone in there in some sort of financial peril. Ali Abdu (Anupam Tripathi ), a Pakistani immigrant, is unsure why he is there. A handsome young cop, Hwang Jun-ho (Ha-joon), ends up there undercover in search of his missing brother, smuggling himself onto the island and witnessing the slaughter as it unfolds, unable to call for backup. The people running the games are masked, disciplined, silent, heavily armed, a man in a Darth Vadar style black mask the leader of the games. None of the competitors are prepared for what’s about to come, game one, ‘Red Light, Green Light’, seeing at least half the 456 cut down by real bullets. The games are brutal and the last one(s) standing wins the prize, a big huge plastic ball thing hanging from the ceiling high up above them out of reach filling up with lots more money after every game, the only incentive in this particular hell to keep playing. .....Any good? Although the protagonist and heroes are identified early on in the piece that are clearly going to last until the final episode or two, and some of the dialogue deliberately clunky and obvious the way you get in Asian TV& film, it’s still mouth gaping TV. And it’s daring, too. I love the way the early episodes are not obvious, episode two a complete surprise U-Turn. The games are horrendous and don’t hold back. The players realize 99% of them will die that week. Admittedly the plot doesn’t bare close inspection. Surely the contestants would be cynical on actually getting any money as it could be fake cash up there and the guards just kill them at the end anyway and so why would they not just overthrow the guards and blow the gaff? But they continue on as their lives are over outside the games anyway and so they chase the money, oblivious to asking who is actually running and paying for the Squid Game.