Dae Jang-Gum DVD Box 3 (Japan Version) DVD Region 2

The production values are high: the photography, the interiors, the outdoor locations and especially the costumes seem carefully and expensively done. The point, though, is the storytelling, and that has the elements of a nineteenth-century novel: obscure parentage and hidden identity, a clear distinction between good and evil (with occasional surprises), a sub-plot of forbidden but chaste love, and comic minor characters. Even the rhythm of crisis and resolution and the end-of-episode cliffhangers fit the mold perfectly. Compelling writing, a very competent cast, and frequent Iron-Chef-like cooking sequences make the hour-long episodes go by too quickly. The only fault may be that Jang-Geum, like Esther Summerson in Bleak House, is too perfect. It's not an insignificant fault, but perhaps it's unavoidable if things are to be kept chugging forward through the sprawling, extroverted plot without getting bogged down in anyone's subjectivity.

It certainly does sprawl. The Great Jang-Geum is projected to run for about sixty one-hour episodes, aired at a rate of two per week. A steady two episodes per week for half a year without interruption makes for a longer and more concentrated viewing experience than what an American drama series can provide, which seems meager by comparison. The result is that watching The Great Jang-Geum becomes part of one's life; it adds enormously to the pleasure to have someone to talk with about the story as it unfolds. It might be most accurate to think of it as a high-class soap opera, but with much tighter plotting and better production, and without the aimlessness, absurdity and desperation that the voracious open-ended soap opera format seems to engender.

What surprises me most is that someone has gone to the all the effort to subtitle this vast program in English. Could it be a labor of love, a purely disinterested act of cultural outreach? Whatever the reason, I salute the effort.

by Peter Riis - The New Companion
Originally published March 2004