Black Knight, review: this post-apocalyptic thriller could be Netflix's new Squid Game – or Mad Max
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Squid Game put South Korean TV on the international map. But with a second season of the Netflix hit only just entering production, fans of its mix of ultra-violence and unhinged plotting face a long wait. Or perhaps not. Riotous new Netflix series Black Knight could potentially fill the Squid Game-shaped hole in the lives of devotees of bonkers Asian television.
This post-apocalyptic epic will also appeal to devotees of Mad Max, who are sure to appreciate its mix of motorised mayhem and trigger-happy fight scenes. Fifty years in the future, global warming has wiped out 99 per cent of the population. Quite how the blight of extreme air pollution impacts the UK of 2071 is not revealed across six gripping episodes – though Britain’s Got Talent is surely still on the air.
But on the Korean peninsula society has splintered into haves and have-nots. The former live in walled-off luxury, the latter eke out an existence in dust-caked cities overrun with bikers. What everyone has in common is a pressing lack of oxygen – a hyper-precious commodity for which people are prepared to kill or be killed.
The saviours in this scenario are delivery drivers – “Black Knights” – who ferry priceless canisters of O2 around the various zones. The most renowned is 5-8 (Kim Woo-bin), who can get his air tanks from A to B faster than most. Grumpy 5-8 is a shameless riff on Mel Gibson circa Mad Max – an anti-hero with a heart of gold and dazzling driving skills.
Meanwhile, the corporate dictatorship which rules Korea is led by ruthless Ryu Seok (Song Seung-heon), a despot whose solution to the population crisis is straightforward: let all the poor people die. Squid Game’s strength was its knife-twisting dialogue. Black Knight is more reliant on special effects. With much of the filming taking place in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, the show conjures a heady sense of mayhem via roaring bikes and wheezing articulated lorries – all framed by an orange dust.
It’s far too cartoonish to become another phenomenon for Netflix. Still, as dystopian escapism goes, the series delivers thrill, spills and chills with dead-eyed efficiency.
