Kingdom on Netflix is a 6 episode period piece with zombies. Its a South Korean film so you either have to read it, or listen to it dubbed. Its set in medieval times in Korea, and tells of a disgraced prince who travels through his land discovering it is being taken over by a zombie apocalypse. I guess season 2 is already ordered.

I watched the first episode earlier tonight and was kind of on the fence about it for the first 3/4th of the epi. It has some of the apparent cheesiness that seems to sometimes come with shows that have a language barrier, and it starts as a slow burn. Then the last 10 or 15 minutes of the episode started speeding up a bit and a couple interesting/creepy sequences occurred, leading up to a probably more action packed second episode. Its still early in the game, but after watching one episode, I'm going back for the second for sure.....

 

Just watched episode 2. Ok, I think i'm in for the duration of season 1 at least. This episode moved along a bit quicker towards the zombie outbreak. The zombies and the death/reanimation process are much more creepy here than in TWD. This is more the way a horror/terror movie zombie would work. And the corpses actually look more like what a real corpse would look like after rotting in the dry heat for a few days.

This is definitely not a knock at Nicotero. I think in TWD they were wise not to make the zombies too scary of an entity. These zombies would be a bit much for your general cable viewer, and I doubt if TWD had gone this route it would have gathered such a following. The first two episodes of this show, taken together, I think make a solid start.

I highly recommend reading the subtitled and NOT listening too it dubbed. I tried out the dubbing for a short bit, and it makes the whole thing seem like a low budget 1980s karate movie.

 

Episode 3 done. Each episode gets better. There are some neat sight gags regarding the zombies in this show, they somehow managed to make them scary and amusing at the same time. And they capitalize on some of the absurdities you might see in a ZA in terms of a ruling vs. a peasant class, and figurehead leaders who are mostly incompetent.

 

I'm really liking Season 2. They are doing a good job showing the collision between 16th century South Korean social hierarchy/ political atmosphere and a zombie apocalypse.