A newNetflixK-drama has become a global hit. Netflix is one of the most popular streaming platforms in the world and has become well-known for its original content, including movies and television series. Their most popular series, which have drawn hundreds of millions of viewers, include theAddams FamilyreimaginingWednesday, the 1980s-set sci-fi fantasy dramaStranger Things, and the Regency-era romanceBridgerton.
Some of the most popular shows on the platform are Netflix original K-dramas.This includes the survival thrillerSquid Game, which has been watched by more than 455 million viewers, with season 1 being the most-watched season on the platform across all languages and season 2 being the third.Squid Gameseason 3is also on the way and may perform similarly. Other notable K-dramas on the platform include the crime dramaMoney Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area, the zombie seriesAll of Us Are Dead, and the romanceMelo Movie.
When Life Gives You Tangerines Is Succeeding On Netflix
It Has Landed On A Major Chart
When Life Gives You Tangerinesis thriving on Netflix. The show spans four “seasons” in the lives of the rebellious Oh Ae-Sun (singer-songwriter IU) and the diligent Yang Gwan-sik (Love in the Moonlightstar Park Bo-gum),telling their love story over a broad span of time. TheNetflix original K-dramaalso stars Kim Tae-yeon (as young Oh Ae-Sun), Moon So-ri (as middle-aged Oh Ae-Sun), Lee Cheon-mu (as young Yang Gwan-sik), Moon Woo-jin (as teenage Yang Gwan-sik), Park Hae-joon (as middle-aged Yang Gwan-sik), Kim Yong-rim, Oh Min-ae, Na Moon-hee, Yeom Hye-ran, and Jung Hae-kyun.
When Life Gives You Tangerines, which was directed by Kim Won-seok and written by Lim Sang-choon, does not have an official Rotten Tomatoes score yet, but it does have a near-perfect 98% audience score.
Netflixhas now calculated their chart of the Top 10 most-watched non-English series globally for the week of March 3 through 9.When Life Gives You Tangerineshas made its debut on the list at No. 4, behindCassandra(No. 3),Just One Look(No. 2), andMedusaseason 1 (No. 1), with 3.6 million viewers amassing a total of 13.9 million viewing hours. It is in the Top 10 in 24 regions and No. 1 in three, namely South Korea, Hong Kong, and Indonesia.
What This Means For When Life Gives You Tangerines
The Show Could Help Spur Change At Netflix
When Life Gives You Tangerines’s Netflix success probably won’t end here.The show has a unique release pattern, with four episodes dropping at a time once a week over the course of four weeks. This runs counter to the platform’s typical release approach for scripted series, which is to drop entire seasons at once.Tangerineshas charted for the first time in its second week, so it seems likely that theromantic K-dramawill continue to rise up the Top 10 in coming weeks as more episodes are added to its overall total and audiences continue to discover it.
Other current K-drama series are also being released on Netflix in similar patterns…
This streaming success is already spreading with other regional content, as the Chinese seriesThe First Frostis also getting a weekly release on Netflix at the time of writing and became the highest-ranking C-drama on Netflix’s daily chart on February 28. Other current K-drama series are also being released on Netflix in similar patterns, includingWhen the Stars GossipandThe Potato Lab. If this approach proves similarly fruitful for those series,it could eventually result in a wider restructuring for other Netflix releases.
BothWhen the Stars GossipandThe Potato Labdebuted on tvN in South Korea and are being distributed by Netflix in limited regions.
The streamer has already experimented with altered release patterns, including weekly drops for unscripted shows such asRhythm + Flow, though their most common alternative approach for releasing narrative shows has so far been to split seasons into two parts. However, there are signs that the tide is turning, especially when it comes to narrative series with hotly anticipated endings that could be spoiled if the entire season is released all at once. For instance,the final season ofCobra Kaiwas split into three parts.
Our Take On The Streaming Success Of When Life Gives You Tangerines
It Could Speak To An Increasing K-Drama Audience
Ultimately, it remains to be seen if the increasingly popular Netflix K-drama release pattern spreads to their English-language scripted properties. The all-at-once release approach has been more or less synonymous with Netflix series for some time because their brand was built off the back of audiences binging licensed series. However, the success ofWhen Life Gives You Tangerinescould have a more potent effect on their production and distribution of K-dramas in general.
10 K-Dramas That I Guarantee You Will Watch More Than Once
Everything in K-dramas works to make them incredibly compelling, so much so that the best of them will have you wanting to rewatch again and again.
At the time of writing, the only K-drama on the all-timeNetflixNon-English Top 10 isSquid Game. The other shows on the chart are Spanish (Money Heist,Berlin), French (Lupin), Mexican (Who Killed Sara?), and Norwegian (La Palma). However,When Life Gives You Tangerineshas charted shortly after the global success ofMelo Movie, and if it is followed onto the chart by any of its weekly K-drama peers, it could speak to the fact that both the genre and the release pattern could become bigger and bigger for the streamer,eventually landing more Korean series on the chart.
