azdak

I'm absolutely loving "Mr Queen" (subtitle "The Joseon Queen Consort Runaway Soul Scandal"), a Korean historical comedy about a celebrity chef, Jang Bong-hwan who transmigrates into the body of a Joseon queen, Cheorin, the night before her wedding and now has to navigate the dangers of the palace as a trans man with only his knowledge of history books (his mother was a history teacher) to help him. He is absolutely terribly at this, but in fairness he's very far from being the only one who isn't what he seems. In this game of masks and intrigue, all the characters have their own individual narratives about what's going on, what ought to be going on, the rightness of their own contribution to events and the motives of those around them, and obviously, when it comes to Queen Cheorin, these narratives are completely and utterly wrong, but at the same time Jang Bong-hwan, relying on a rudimentary knowledge of history and entirely too selfish to consider anyone else's perspective, gets their inner lives just as wrong. At times it's like watching characters from two different films collide, to hilarious effect. While those around him are scheming to gain power/save the country/ off their rivals/save their true love, Jang Bong-hwan's main goal is to return to his old life and get his dick back, and until that happens he has the subsidiary goals of (1) staying alive, (2) getting off with the king's extremely fanciable and virtuous concubine and (3) absolutely, definitely NOT sex with the king, despite having promised the Grand Dowager to conceive an heir within 7 days (see (1)). Shin Hye-sun turns in an amazing performance as Jang-Bong-hwan-in-the-body-of-Queen-Cheorin (if you have ever felt frustrated by the restrictions and passivity imposed on Asian heroines, this performance was created specially for you) and the plot serves up a near endless succession of delightful twists and turns, genuinely funny comic moments, affectionate satire of k-drama genre conventions and a great deal of Schadenfreude as Jang Bong-hwan is gradually forced to come to terms with living as a Joseon-era woman. I'm on episode 6 and so far it comes second only to Nirvana in Fire in terms of sheer enjoyability.