Maids: Korean TV drama (2015)

I've been alerted to "Maids", a TV drama set in medieval Korea, a while back by a reader of this blog, but it's only recently that I've found time to take a look at the first few episodes. I've already mentioned the strange fascinations that most East Asian nations, including Korea, have with maids and servants. Maids are mainstays of fashion magazine spreads - for example, Vogue Korea  or Vogue Japan. There is the odd phenomenon of "maid cafes", where waitresses are dressed like French maids. There is even, as I've recently discoved, a Japanese girl band appropriately called Band-Maid, whose members are always dressed as maids, even though they play hard rock.

So it was hardly a surprise for me that Koreans would make a TV series with a plot made for Ladies Becoming Maids blog.

When a young and beautiful Korean noblewoman's father is proclaimed a traitor, she loses her status overnight and becomes a slave and maid to her former rival. She is then forced to adjust to her new life as a lowly handmaiden, while humiliated and ridiculted by some of her fellow female slaves. It's a classic, fairytale-style story of a loss of status.

All the 20 episodes are available on youtube with English subtitles for those that are interested, but be warned that a lot of the drama and emotion may come across as slighly comical to a discerning Western viewer used to method acting.

However, the scenes of fall from grace and introduction to her new life in episodes 3 and 4 are well-done and reminded me of some of the best lady-to-maid stories. Here is how the former rich lady is greeted by the other maids shortly after her downfall - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFcGNyybnwI#t=32m43s. And this is when the poor heroine puts on a maid's dress and ugly peasant shoes for the first time to be instructed by a housekeeper about her new duties - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrN9WKqTeQM#t=26m23s.

Then, of course, the story turns away from a more fascinating topic of social downgrade, loss of status and degradation towards the tired route that many such period dramas follow. There is intrigue, plots, love interests, handsome secret agents disguised as servants and so on. Yawn.