What a view | From Alice in Borderland to 100 Days My Prince, what to watch over the new year
- Japanese thriller Alice in Borderland on Netflix taps into the existential angst of 2020
- HBO Asia’s first romcom, Adventure of the Ring, offers a more comforting outlook
If this unprecedented year of upheaval and dislocation has convinced you that existence is just one big, brutal, alternative-reality game from which no one escapes alive, then Alice in Borderland (Netflix) is in your corner.
The eight manga-inspired episodes of series one (now streaming) won’t fill you with hope for the new year, but may reflect a disconcerting 12 months in their fiendish appraisal of what it takes to survive an apocalypse.
Three Tokyo deadbeats (Kento Yamazaki, Yuki Morinaga and Keita Machida) hide from the police after larking about on Shibuya crossing. When they emerge the city is deserted, so for want of something better to do they follow a distant light to the location of the first in a series of deadly games.
They inadvertently plough on down a perplexing rabbit hole, as the sinister challenges and bloody penalties rack up. Anyone who has felt trapped, then zapped, this year will connect with the players’ pain.
There is also plenty of pain in new-to-Netflix Korean drama 100 Days My Prince (series one available now), starring Doh Kyung-soo and Nam Ji-hyun. In common with many exquisitely shot, portentous historical costume dramas, 100 Days is stuffed full of bloody rebellion, political intrigue, treachery, paranoia and, naturally, young love.