It was just a matter of time and numbers.

The South Korean series

Squid Game

, which launched less than a month ago and has become a worldwide phenomenon, has been viewed by 111 million subscribing households.

A record.

"It is a great pride to see this Korean production become our best series launch of all time", welcomed this Wednesday Netflix via its Twitter account by revealing these data.

You are not one of those millions of curious people?

Here's what you need to know to participate in a discussion on the subject without having seen a single episode or to make you want to take a look.

Be careful, the following lines contain spoilers but do not reveal the outcome of the plot or its most striking twists.

  • What does it say?

The hero, Seong Ji-Hun, a forty-something, lives sparingly with his sick mother in Seoul. Divorced and the father of a young girl, he has serious money problems. One evening, on the metro platform, a mysterious businessman offers to play

ddakji

, a game of turning a cardboard square using another cardboard square. With each unsuccessful attempt, Seong Ji-Hun receives a slap in the face. If successful, he wins cash. The man ends up giving him his card and suggests that he call him if he's willing to play other games for cash. Of which act. The forty-something does not take long to find himself in a huge dormitory alongside 455 other men and women, all of them with money problems. In the lot are a North Korean teenager, a Pakistani immigrant, a former childhood friend of Seong Ji-Hun, a bandit and a seriously ill old man to whom the scenario will particularly focus.

Dressed in green tracksuits and watched by men masked in red overalls, these hundreds of people will successively play six children's games: hide and seek, tug of war, marbles… Particularity of the concept: the losers are executed on the spot .

Each corpse increases the pot that the ultimate survivors can hope to win.

45.6 billion won, or 33 million euros, are up for grabs.

At the same time, a police officer, who discovered in his missing brother a card similar to that of the businessman, undertakes an investigation ...

  • If you want to give the impression of having seen all nine episodes ...

You can say, “The first two episodes aren't the most captivating, but it's worth hanging on. In

Squid Game

, the violence is very graphic - we understand the prohibition against under 16s. However, the series is not limited to a free-to-play slaughter game: the plot is a metaphor for social inequalities, class violence and shows a reflection, distorted by the horrific prism, of South Korean society. 'today. Of course, the concept of a

survival game

 is nothing new. We think a lot, for example, of the American saga "Hunger Games" or the seminal

Battle Royale.

, a Japanese manga, adapted for cinema in 2000, in which high school students are forced to kill each other until only one remains alive.

There is also a bit of

American Nightmare

in the later episodes, when wealthy Westerners, called VIPs, revel in the show.

What makes Squid Game unique is the contrast between bright and pastel colors, childish decorations and games with lethal consequences.

This reinforces the cruelty of the whole.

"

  • A global phenomenon

The series therefore had the best start on Netflix since the creation of the platform. Note, however, that by "watch

Squid Game

 ", the American firm implies "who watched at least two minutes of the first episode". The figures announced are not subject to verification by a third party, unlike audience measurements for traditional television. In any case,

Squid Game

 broke the record so far held by a series of an entirely different kind,

Bridgerton

, telling the sentimental intrigues of good British society at the beginning of the 19th century. It had been viewed by 82 million accounts in the four weeks following its posting at the end of 2020.

Squid Game

topped the charts on Netflix in more than 80 countries.

Shortly after it went live, memes started popping up on the internet, proof of its induction into popular culture.

How I see all the memes circulating on #SquidGame #squidgamenetflix pic.twitter.com/rNmuUrWX4w

- d0 ツ t (@Expect_ative) October 5, 2021

The

Squid Game

frenzy

has even reached China where Netflix is ​​banned.

Chinese and Chinese devour episodes via illegal streaming.

So South Korea's Ambassador to China Jang Ha-sung called on Chinese authorities to intervene.

  • The growing influence of South Korean culture

Squid Game

is further proof of South Korea's growing influence on the global cultural scene, following the K-pop sensation BTS and

Parasite

, Palme d'Or at Cannes and the first non-English film to win the best film. In February, Netflix announced a plan to invest 432 million euros for this year alone in series and films produced in South Korea and a video game inspired by

Squid Game is said to

be in development. The white shoes worn by the characters are on the internet, while the outfits of the heroes and masked guards are already announced as the big trend for Halloween this year. Irony of the

Squid Game

phenomenon

 : while the series is a critique of ultracapitalism, it has become, as

Télérama

wrote

, “the click champion of the most powerful multinational streaming company”.

Another effect of the series: taste buds around the world now want to taste dalgonas, a sugar cookie long associated with extreme post-war poverty that lies at the heart of a fictional ordeal.

A tasteful appetite?

Society

"Squid Game": Yes, schoolchildren have imitated the games in the series

Culture

"Squid Game": The creator of the series says more about season 2

  • Culture

  • Series

  • Netflix

  • Record

  • South Korea