Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Black Knight’ On Netflix, A Post-Apocalyptic Korean Drama About A Deliveryman Who Does More Than Just Drop Off Packages

Post-apocalyptic shows need time to set up their worlds, mainly because the “new normal” its humans are trying to survive always has new terminology and new social strata to navigate. The more successful shows keep viewers engaged while building those worlds. A new South Korean series takes place 40 years after a comet turned Seoul and the rest of the planet into a desert wasteland.

BLACK KNIGHT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Pictures of Seoul before a comet collided with Earth, 40 years before Black Knight takes place.

The Gist: After the comet hit, South Korea became a desert wasteland, with low air quality. It forced the last remaining humans on earth — about 1% of the population — to invent ways to generate and maintain oxygen levels. But not everyone got to take advantage of it; a QR code tattooed on a person’s hand determined their level of access and their living conditions. Many survivors, deemed refugees, lived above ground in the poor conditions with very little in the way of supplies.

Some refugees become poachers, trying to steal supplies that are being ferried to the General population by deliverymen like 5-8 (Kim Woo-bin). Becoming a deliveryman is the only hope of refugees to get a QR code tattooed on their hand. The reputation of the deliverymen has become legendary, especially 5-8, who has become a celebrity of sorts. He also has a higher level of ethics than other deliverymen, who seek to cut off QR-coded hands of people who are still alive in order to gain access to more livable conditions.

Meanwhile, Jung Seul-ah (Roh Yoon-seo) is living with her sister, Seol-ah (Esom), a major in the Defense Intelligence Command. They happen to be harboring a refugee, Yung Sa-wol (Kang You-Seok), which is considered a serious crime. Sa-wol keeps leaving the flat to gamble with supplies, but he also feels like he’s getting closer to his goal of becoming a deliveryman. At one point, he and a group of buddies actually mount 5-8’s truck, and Sa-wol actually gets in the cab next to the legendary deliveryman.

Construction is underway to relocate the Special District, which has clean air and feels most like the previous world, to a new underground location. Ryu Seok (Song Seung-heon), son of the leader of the Cheonmyeong Group, the company that’s more or less in charge of this world, is supervising construction. He’s also chafing under needing to keep the government in the loop.

At night, 5-8 and a group of doctors and other deliverymen deliver supplies and help to those in greatest need. Seol-ah is suspicious of the secrecy the Cheonmyeong Group has shrouding the new construction. And Sa-wol tries to defend Seul-ah when gun-toting men break into their apartment.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? In the world of post-apocalyptic series, Black Knight feels more like The Stand or The 100 than a zombie show like The Last Of Us.

Our Take: Written and directed by Cho Ui-seok based on a webtoon of the same name, Black Knight‘s strengths are in its visuals, from the sepia dust-covered ruins of Seoul to the more utopian-looking Special District. The same can be said of the show’s fight and chase scenes; both are well-choreographed and shot, and they move the plot along without dragging down the pacing of each episode.

The story itself is a bit confusing if you just go by the explanation given in the opening of the first episode. We had to listen to that opening bit of exposition at least three times to remember where everyone is in the societal pecking order, who gets QR codes and who doesn’t. There’s a reason Sa-wol wants to be a deliveryman, and it’s not just because he admires 5-8; it’s the only way he can get out of the hell of being a refugee. Why Seol-ah, a major in the DIC, has been harboring him for so long is something we don’t quite know about yet, but we hope to find out more as the series progresses.

We also don’t see as much of 5-8’s Black Knight activity, except for the segment where he and a group of other Knights help a very vulnerable population of refugees. The idea is that he and the other Black Knights will rail against the Cheonmyeong Group controlling all the resources, but we’ve yet to see that in action. We do think that Seol-ah will be an ally and not an enemy, but that may take some time to set up.

As far as post-apocalyptic series go, the environment the refugees are in may look foreboding, but the Black Knights provide at least a modicum of hope, and hope is something we always like to see in shows like this.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: After the attack on Seul-ah, Sa-wol looks like he gets shot in the back or the back of the head.

Sleeper Star: The sleeper star here is the visual effects team, for making Seoul look so desolate and dusty.

Most Pilot-y Line: Sa-wol gets into 5-8’s truck and tells the deliveryman, “Shut up and fight me,” as if 5-8 has time to oblige such a pandering request.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Black Knight may take a couple of episodes to fully build out its world, but it’s not a slow-paced introduction to this post-apocalyptic version of Seoul, with stunning visuals and well-done fight sequences.

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.