What a view | My Country: The New Age and Catherine the Great – two opulent period dramas bring history to life
- The coup that kicked off the Joseon dynasty is the subject of the latest South Korean fare from Netflix, with inevitable love triangle included
- On HBO, Helen Mirren assumes the role of the infamous Russian Empress and reigns supreme
When novelist L.P. Hartley scribbled his celebrated epithet, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there,” he’d obviously just enjoyed a preview of two extravagantly and exquisitely put together costume dramas available now on a screen near you.
My Country: The New Age, on Netflix, finds itself in excellent recent company by plundering the history of Old Korea for a tale of skull-smashing military action offset by the tender tangles of young love’s favourite shape – the triangle.
It’s the last knockings of the 14th century and during an attack on a royal household former best mates Seo Hwi (Yang Se-jong) and Nam Seon-ho (Woo Do-hwan), now enemies divided by politics and social rank, go straight to the point, at the end of their respective swords. How they came to be in this pretty pickle is explained in a lengthy flashback that bows to the beauty and bloody-mindedness of Han Hui-jae (Kim Seol-hyun), who’s no meek love interest but a firebrand revolutionary with a price on her head. She’s also a sophisticated, bewitching kisaeng, or courtesan, much like a geisha and comparably educated.
But this doesn’t stop her from being discriminated against, together with the rest of the “lowborns”. Nevertheless, in this production, they would seize any prize for television’s best scrubbed-up oppressed classes, so harmoniously do they fit into Goryeo’s glossy and spectrum-straddling, if still largely rural, expanse.
Series one is now hitting its enterprising stride, but there’s still time to choose a side.