Broadcaster: Netflix
Genre: Crime, youth
Episode count: 10
Netflix’s newest upcoming original drama Extracurricular drops tomorrow! It’s kind of a big deal when Netflix produces their own K-drama, and previous offerings have boasted really great production quality, and interesting stories (zombies, emotion-reading apps, AI romance, and more). Extracurricular isn’t Netflix’s first foray into youth dramas — they’ve done two prior, and quite nicely — but this is the first time they’re doing it dark. And Extracurricular (at least what they’ve let us see of it) is pretty darn dark.
Our lead is a model student played by Kim Dong-hee (who most recently made waves in Itaewon Class). He’s forced to lead a double life: our boy has turned to crime in order to earn enough for his college tuition. When a fellow student (Park Joo-hyun from A Piece of Your Mind, whoa!) uncovers his “extracurricular activities” they spiral into something even darker.
The premise might sound a little extreme, but it looks like the drama will be an interesting exploration of what happens when people value money above all — and then have to live with the unpredictable and irrevocable consequences of their actions. I do like that the drama will look into the gravity of the choices that are made, and the lengths to which our high schoolers are willing to go. Digging into the human condition can make for quite a juicy story.
A drama with a cast of fresh faces is always exciting, and in addition to our leads, we have Jung Da-bin and Nam Yoon-soo playing an iljin couple. Add a veteran actor like Choi Min-soo into the mix (he always wows me), and it sounds like a pretty compelling drama awaits us!
But perhaps the real question that you want answered is whether this drama will be complete when it is released, or if we’ll have to suffer through a similar fate with Extracurricular as we have with Love Alarm. Sadly, there’s no clear answer on that, but I’ve got a hunch that the drama will be released in its entirety. Or maybe that’s just blind hope speaking? Either way, for those that like a good binge watch, Extracurricular has some pretty perfect timing.