While I did enjoy Kingdom for the most part and I though it was shot and acted really well and the production value was excellent, I did find myself struggling a bit with connecting to it emotionally. I don’t think it was the story line, I don’t mind zombies at all and I often enjoy stories that involve them. I think it was more to do with the length of the show and the fact that no matter what the drama seamed to throw at the characters they didn’t really change in any way. The righteous prince was still the righteous prince six episodes later.

And in a story about survival, like Kingdom (or just any story for the matter) I need to be emotionally connected to the characters in order to root for them. I did not feel like any of the characters stood out to me, no matter how well acted they were.

The story line itself was cool and quite interesting. It was, for the most part, a well put-together show. I had been excited about it since it was announced so in a way it was a letdown that I did not find it binge watchable enough. I did have my doubts about the six episode format and that it seemed to want to expand the story to two seasons before the first season aired, like the just cut the story in half. So I only got one half of the story, which annoyed me a little.

My annoyance might come out because that isn’t how I am used to consuming my kdramas. It was interesting to see kdrama with perhaps a little more Netflix style. There are a lot of dramas on Netflix, but most were not made for Netflix and maybe not quite this binge formula in mind - although a lot of dramas are very good for such a binge. It might be that I am more used to the sixteen to twenty four episode dramas, so I did not feel like six episodes were enough to develop the story. Sometimes dramas don’t find their groove until episode six.

These six episodes delivered a pretty tight, exciting, actionpacked plot - and the action scenes were often great, but would have been greater if I cared more what happened to the characters - and for a zombie show I didn’t feel like the same story line was repeated over and over again, even if good number of the episodes were devoted to fighting or running away from zombies.

The politics of the palace and that whole story line mashed well with the action and the two plot did work quite well together. They did not feel like two completely different stories, which can sometimes happen when you mix genres together. Although most of the time, I enjoyed the politics and the scheming inside the palace more than the stuff that was happening outside the palace.

But because season one only had six episodes there was a lot that needed to be done and set up and I didn’t feel that the characters were getting enough of the time for us to get to know them properly, or develop too much. But we also have not gotten the complete story and in some way it seamed to have just gotten started when it ended. And in a way I feel like I can’t really judge it (too much) before I have seen the second half of this story. But this was the good spin on the zombie story