11 Recent TV Shows That Surprised Everyone

The fact that a South Korean drama series, made without a massive budget and released without any fanfare outside of its home country, became the most watched television show in the world is completely baffling on paper, but the runaway success of Squid Game is a testament to the incredible power that word-of-mouth marketing holds in a world that is connected globally by social media.

Though we’ll probably never know how many of the 142 million Netflix households watched more than the two minutes of it (the minimum amount of time that the streaming platform defines as a ‘viewing’), the ubiquity of Squid Game was inescapable, as schools issued panicked warnings about students replicating its content and fancy-dress merchants rushed to get the iconic Playstation symbol faced outfits of the game’s guards out in time for Halloween.

It helped that the show itself was a rollercoaster ride from start to finish and its social commentary hit home hard at a time where ever-growing income inequality is creating massive divides between rich and poor in supposedly developed countries like the UK and USA.

The twists are excellent, the deaths of many characters are absolutely brutal to take and Gi-Hun makes for a compelling lead throughout, flawed but capable of maintaining his humanity as those around him succumb to depravity.

A second season is unnecessary, but will no doubt intrigue even if viewers drop off massively.