A lady assassin and a cop, feudal style. Yes, please
Halfway through the first episode, Conspiracy in the Court stopped being confusing and overwhelming (the subtitles which read like they were straight out of Chaucer did not help) and just clicked, becoming irresistable, "must marathon" phenom. I think that happened about the time when I discovered the heroine of this is a former noblewoman, uprooted from her family, finishing her punishing training, and now a deadly assassin hell-bent on overthrowing the government even as her soul erodes bit by bit. Think as if the heroine of the drama was a medieval Sun Hwa (IRIS) or maybe a feudal Sang Joo (Capital Scandal).
CitC is an eight-ep 'experimental' drama made by the director of upcoming Chuno and I finally got spurred to push through it to see what Chuno might be like. Based on the first ep, if the PD is consistent, we may expect something (a) very grim; (b) complicated; (c) gorgeously-shot - it's an amazingly shot drama, especially seeing that it must have been on a shoestring budget.
I sort of gave up trying to follow which political party wants which, so what I got was that there is unrest in the Kingdom, poor are, as always, poor, corruption and court competition flourish. Into all this, come our three heroes - our heroine is a former idealistic noblewoman whose family got destroyed and who got rescued from God-knows-what horrors by a 'gentleman' who trained her to be a perfect assassin - something she both hates and does gladly as it helps to build a better world. One of our heroes is an illegitimate son of a nobleman - he has a lot of promise, but stubbornly insists on "wasting" (as per Daddy) it in the police beaureau. He and Heroine used to be in love before whatever happened to her family happened and she disappeared, and they clearly still have feelings for each other. The other hero was some sort of a butler in heroine's household and is now a revolutionary. A sexy scruffy one.
Seeing that the policeman just discovered all these corpses mysteriously piling up, I foresee collision and tragedy and death for everyone.
This drama is ridiculously gorgeous!
Koreans have a weird idea of flirting:
With sexy rebel butler:
Heroine transforms into a courtesan for one of her assassinations:
Seeing that I am on a period drama kick, I think I will check out 8 Days for deep and plotty reasons:
ETA: Apparently there are rumors of having Kwon Sang Woo be the star of IRIS "sequel". Mmmm, yes please. KSW tortured and bleeding and emoing all over while blowing things up? Hell yes. I adore him and yet he hasn't been in anything in years I've been really into.
Plus, the dude is HOT:
