Stream It Or Skip It: 'The 8 Show' on Netflix, a dark comedy where people join a strange game show where time is literally money (2024)

Scripted shows that throw a bunch of characters together in a strange game seem to be a specialty of South Korea. Squid Game came out three years ago and became a worldwide smash because it was a scripted drama that was about surviving a game. Was there plot outside the game play? Yes, but not much. Now, a more darkly comedic scripted series about people in a game has come out of South Korea. In this game, time is literally money.

THE 8 SHOW: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “I thought I’d be different,” says Bae Jin-su (Ryu Jun-yeol) as he looks out on the water as he stands at the railing of a bridge.

The Gist: Jin-su there because he’s about to end it all. He’s heavily in debt, owing 900 million won (about $667,000) to loan sharks. He works a lot of minimum-wage jobs, like at a convenience store, and has no discernable skills, thanks to his liberal arts college degree. He borrowed the money after an investment banker promised him he’d help him turn a huge profit, which of course didn’t work. So, after dangling from 40 stories up while washing windows, Jin-su felt he had no other choice.

Right before he jumps, he sees notices that money is going into his account, and a limo pulls up. Jin-Su thinks it’s some sort of citywide suicide-prevention program, and is surprised when the drinks in the limo are fake. He’s dropped off at a theater and presented with a card, a stack of money, and numbered cardkeys. He can take the stacks of money and go home or he can take a cardkey and go through the curtain. At first he takes the money, thinking nothing but bad things are behind that curtain. But, he figures, he was about to kill himself, so if someone is harvesting organs back there, what’s the difference?

Behind the curtain is a massive, colorful room, and eight floors of bedrooms. A clock reads 24:00:00.00. The number on his cardkey – 3 – corresponds to the floor he’s on. He goes into the room, and sees an empty space and a digital scoreboard. He’s presented with a uniform with his key number on it and a rule book. What he eventually figures out is that every minute he spends in the room earns him 30,000 won. But he has nothing to sleep on or pee into, and the prices of anything he brings in are 100 times what they’d be in the real world. If he leaves the room before 8 AM, he loses half his earnings. So he improvises, getting a bottle to pee in and cardboard boxes and newspapers to sleep on.

The next morning, he sees that time has been added to the clock. He meets the other players in this game: 8F (Chun Woo-Hee), 7F (Park Jeong-Min), 4F (Lee Yul-Eum), 6F (Park Hae-Joon), 2F (Lee Joo-Young), 5F (Moon Jeong-Hee) and 1F (Bae Sung-Woo). They decide to refer to each other by their numbers. They all have distinctive personalities: 7F is logical, 6F a bit rough. 8F wears only her bra under her uniform jacket and acts privileged.

They not only figure out that everything in the common areas is fake, including the food, but if they call for supplies there, time is taken off the clock. But the time reduced costs less money than the money things cost in their rooms. So they all ask for buckets, toilet paper and cigs. Then, when they realize the “free” food isn’t coming, 8F admits she got 12 packs of food and water in her room. When the group figures out the food is for all of them, but it’s not supposed to leave her room, 7F figures out that the chute that delivers items to them connects all the rooms. All of the contestants go up to the 8th floor to 8F’s quarters. That’s when they realize that not everything in the game is created equal.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The 8 Show, written and directed by Han Jae-rim and based on the webtoons Money Game and Pie Game, feels a lot like Squid Game, except that no one is killed if they lose a challenge (we think).

Our Take: The 8 Show might be as dark as Squid Game, but it’s definitely more wryly funny than the Netflix megahit. In a way, it’s actually more intriguing. Sure, in both shows money is at stake. But in the case of The 8 Show, the contestants are going to have to figure out whether they will work together or be at each other’s throats in order to preserve whatever pot of money they think they’re winning.

We don’t know a ton about the characters playing this game. Except for 3F — Bae Jin-su — we don’t even know their names, at least not yet. But we don’t really need to right now. This is a case where each character’s broad archetypes serve the plot well. Someone needs to be the practical one. Someone needs to be the spoiled one, and someone needs to be the rebellious one. Jin-su’s thing is that he is good with prices and numbers, but for the most part he just seems like a neutral party. Because we’re seeing the game from his perspective, that’s a good archetype for him to settle into.

Han Jae-rim does try to get a bit stylistic, especially during the pre-credits sequence, which is shot in 4:3 format. We wonder if those kinds of stylistic touches will continue as the game gets more surreal; the set design of the game’s central courtyard is certainly colorful and surreal. We welcome some stylistic asides as the show goes on, because we suspect that some of the show’s dark humor is going to go by the wayside as the contestants figure out just how long the game is and how they may need to screw other players to get ahead. They’ve already figured out there’s a hierarchy when it comes to the rooms, the money earned per minute and the food. What other things are the game masters going to do to mess with these people?

Sex and Skin: Besides 8F parading around in her bra like she’s Sue Ellen Mischke, there’s nothing.

Parting Shot: The contestants see 8F’s room and realize she’s making much more per minute than they are. One of the contestants says, “Aw, sh*t” in English.

Sleeper Star: 7F, played by Park Jeong-Min, is certainly asserting himself as a leader in the first episode, given his application of logic to the proceedings. Who knows how long that will last, though?

Most Pilot-y Line: When the two thugs come to Jin-su’s flat to break his legs, they bang on his door, but are immediately shooed off by a mom whose baby is being woken up.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Like Squid Game, the fun of The 8 Show is seeing just what kind of situations the characters are going to be put in and how they figure out how to play the strange game they find themselves in.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.