[Why you should watch] Under the Queen’s Umbrella MGG

[Why you should watch] Under the Queen’s Umbrella

by Guest Beanie

By: @kate88hammon (FormAnOrderlyQueue)

I love history and spent many years teaching it. I am that nerd who can find something to interest me in the most mundane historical things. However, sageuk can drive me to despair.

It’s not about historical accuracy – I am absolutely no expert in Korean history and wouldn’t know whether x, y, or z was done/held/placed/said correctly. Instead, it is about capturing and holding an audience’s interest in things which initially seem foreign and irrelevant — something for which history teachers develop a sixth sense. Nothing like a bunch of apathetic teens on a wet Wednesday to hone your skills at finding the tiny story or detail that will grip them and make them care! When sageuk dramas routinely fail to do this, I feel it keenly. It’s not that there aren’t good stories in there, they just seem to suffer from a lack of storytelling prowess.

But enter Under the Queen’s Umbrella! I would argue that this was something of a masterclass in storytelling and therefore deserves your time. Let me build my case.

Firstly, production. While your eyebrow may be arching suspiciously at the idea that this could affect the story, I would like to suggest that it does. In the same way that a set of bad PowerPoint slides can kill a lesson by distracting the kids, a drama that doesn’t understand the world they’re building immediately takes our attention in the wrong direction. Maybe we are distracted from the story by the strange framing of a shot, the jarring color palette, the wrong costume choice, the odd lipstick, the too-beautiful shot that suddenly wrenches us from the story to focus more on the aesthetics. The physical context needs to be just right so that our attention naturally lingers on the story. Under the Queen’s Umbrella got this right: stunning us whilst supporting us.

Secondly, acting. Every drama has an actor or two (or many) who are relatively new to the game and their performance could be something of a weak link. Once again, we are jarred from our focus on the story by wooden expressions, badly timed reactions, and other wince-worthy moments. Under the Queen’s Umbrella was setting itself up to fail here by casting a large number of young actors playing all the princes. However, Kim Hye-soo was brought in to play the queen, and she grabbed the whole drama by the scruff of the neck. Setting the standard of her performance sky-high, she insisted that every single fellow actor meet her there, and she got her demand. We have evil princes, comedy princes, tragic princes, swoony princes, ordinary princes – but not a single one slipped from human to cartoon with Her Majesty keeping them in line. Not just a superb individual performance from Kim Hye-soo, but a vital contribution to the whole.

Thirdly, themes. A drama has to be connecting with us in some way if it is going to make us care about the story. One of the themes of Under the Queen’s Umbrella is simply “love” – but expanded to explore how multi-faceted love is. We have the respectful love between the king and the queen as they advise and listen to each other, the unconditional love of a mother for her sons in the choices they make, the passionate love for justice to be done even though that involves making an enemy of the dowager, the unfailing love that believes that unforgiving circumstances can be changed, and more. The drama gets its hooks into our hearts by one route or another and invests us in the story it is telling.

Fourthly, characters. To tell a compelling story, we have to have a cast of characters that is big enough to support the story and keep us interested, but not so big that we’ve all lost who is who and cease to care about them as individuals. Once again, Under the Queen’s Umbrella nails it. The princes, the wives and concubines, the ministers: we know each person, we see their motivations and their fears, we care that they get their happy ending or their comeuppance. In particular, Under the Queen’s Umbrella gives more time to the development of the female characters than many other sageuk, giving us windows into palace politics on different levels and allowing us to see all our characters as three dimensional in their choices and actions. These people matter to us.

Finally, and most importantly, the story. Here, Under the Queen’s Umbrella gives me the experience that I missed in many other sageuk dramas: a story with details, pacing, arcs, and twists that kept me rapt from start to finish. Our knowledge and understanding of “what is going on” is built with expertise so that we are never confused but also never patronized. We have a story where no one is untouchable and everyone’s downfall is possible, giving us genuine tension. The main story of the demise of the first crown prince and the rise of his replacement holds the narrative together, but is richly woven with sub-plots and supporting threads that generate momentum and keep us hooked.

In my book, Under the Queen’s Umbrella gets pretty much everything right for telling a story well. Yes, this particular story may not be to your taste, but you will want to tip your hat to the team that put this together. Watch it, and imagine how your history lessons could have been!

 
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