Even for those of us who may—we admit it!—have become a bit jaded by the sheer onslaught of streaming entertainment over the last decade/century/whatever it feels like in your aging bones, we occasionally run into something so silly and weird that it manages to give us pause. Like, for example, the following premise for Chicken Nugget, a new South Korean TV import Netflix is about to roll out this month:
A beloved woman suddenly turned into a Dakgangjeong (sweet & sour chicken) after entering a mysterious machine. This is only the beginning of a series of unpredictable events. A tearful and comic mystery of two men struggling to save their lover/daughter.
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Having noticed this thing sitting on the Netflix press site while we (we swear!) were trying to get some actual work done, we couldn’t help but spend a few minutes on its accompanying trailer and, yep, wouldn’t you know it: This is a TV show about two guys trying to save a woman who’s been turned into a small breaded lump of fried chicken by a magical machine.
Created by Lee Byeong-heon (whose 2019 cop comedy Extreme Job was a) also weirdly focused on fried chicken, and b) one of the highest-grossing films in South Korean film history), the show reunites Lee with that film’s star, Ryu Seung-ryong, along with younger actor Ahn Jae-hong, as they play the father and secret admirer, respectively, of human being/chicken piece Choi Min-ah. (Who’s played by Kim You-jung as a human, and nobody as a chicken nugget, because she doesn’t talk or move around or anything—she’s just a non-sentient piece of chicken.) The tone of the whole thing is deliberately, aggressively goofy and charming in a way that weirdly gets past our defenses; there’s something undeniably funny about watching these two guys lose their minds by screaming mournfully at a bright orange piece of (frankly delicious looking) fried poultry.
Chicken Nugget debuts on Netflix on March 15.