In this era of bounteous streaming series, a steady stream of cinematically-released films, internet oddities and beyond, you’d be forgiven for thinking that nearly every story has, at this point, been told already. And then something comes along to remind you that there are still original ideas left in the world: like, what if there was a show in which a human woman was turned by a machine into a chicken nugget, leaving her father and an intern who has a crush on her to try and turn her back into a human? That sound you hear is Joseph Campbell’s brain exploding. This is the premise of a new Netflix series titled – you guessed it – Chicken Nugget, and it comes from South Korean writer-director Lee Byeong-heon. Check out the wild trailer here:
Well… there it is. Your standard woman-becomes-chicken-nugget show. It is – in a glorious turn of phrase – described as a ‘crispy-fried comedy’, and beyond the absurdist premise there’s a real visual identity from what we see here, with all those popping block-colours. Ryu Seung-ryong and Ahn Jae-hong play the duo attempting to re-humanise Kim Yoo-jung’s nuggeted woman. It might not turn out to be the next Squid Game, but Chicken Nugget shows there’s some particularly distinctive work coming out of South Korea’s Netflix originals – just be sure to have a stack of your own delicious nuggets to hand when digging into this one.
Chicken Nugget – for one last time, a show about a woman who turns into a chicken nugget – comes to Netflix on 15 March. What a time to be alive.