Despite the streaming service’s output in the country coming under scrutiny for all the wrong reasons after it was revealed many key creatives barely see a penny for their efforts, Korean content continues to be among the most reliable avenues of instant success on Netflix, and Destined with You is the latest to roll off the production line and become an overnight sensation.
Per FlixPatrol, the genre-bending series has arrived as the fifth most-watched episodic offering on the global charts, ascending onto the Top 10 in 53 countries just 24 hours after debuting. Like plenty of other K-dramas before it, though, trying to quantify exactly what it is and what it’s about could be a head-scratcher for the uninitiated.
Jo Bo-ah stars as Lee Hong-jo, a humble civil servant who meets Rowoon’s high-flying lawyer Jang Shin-yu, which sounds like the fairly standard setup for a formulaic tale of romance between star-crossed lovers. Naturally, things aren’t that simple when the bulk of the narrative outside of the flirtatious gazes revolves around a cursed and forbidden book that was sealed away 300 years previously, leaving Shin-yu to end up becoming the latest victim struck down by the ominous tome’s mysterious powers.
There’s also the lingering feeling that their connection isn’t quite beholden to the natural laws of time and space, either, throwing yet another element into a melting pot of genre influences that covers period pieces, legal dramas, romantic longings, fantasy, mysticism, and the supernatural to name but a few.
It’s unique if nothing else, and subscribers are clearly keen to find out how things resolve themselves looking at Destined with You‘s robust performance on a worldwide level.
