A cultural juggernaut returns – is it finally time to join in?

Telegraph

6 hours ago

Last week, I described enjoying a lightly-roasted lamb rack (garlic and rosemary crumb, Greek salad on the side) to accompany episode seven of The Four Seasons. This week: cucumber gazpacho and Squid Game. How the mighty are fallen.
I mean, the gazpacho part was all right. It seemed like a good idea when the thermometer hit 30C. I began with a recipe from the BBC website: peel a cucumber, then blitz it in a blender with 150g of white bread, 50g blanched almonds, a garlic clove, some fresh basil leaves, two tablespoons each of olive oil and sherry vinegar, salt and pepper and 500g of water. I didn't have any sherry vinegar so I used wine vinegar, and at the last minute – partly out of suspicion and partly so as not to disappoint my dinner companion who thinks I'm too stubborn ever to follow recipes precisely, though I suppose that comes to the same thing – I added an avocado.
It was fine. It had that quality you get with risotto or spaghetti carbonara: the first few spoons are delicious, then it seems like an hour's gone by and you're still eating it. If you want to give this a go, I'd suggest you do it in shot glasses for a starter.
I'm including it here only because I'm excited by my new 'recipe and review' format (it'll be really handy in those weeks when there's nothing much to say about the programme) and I won't get shouted at online for this recipe because it's vegan.
Mind you, if you're vegan, I don't think you're going to like Squid Game. It's all blood and suffering. (Although if you're only vegan because it's fashionable then bingo! This show is Korean.)
I hated it. Let's get that out the way early. I always reckoned I would hate Squid Game, but series three dropped on Friday and everybody's talking about it so (with a miserable sigh) I decided I should attempt to get at least a vague handle on what the whole thing's about. I feel much the same way about the situation in Iran.
Squid Game featured so much visceral violence, I was relieved to be having cucumber gazpacho and not meat. Even a tomato gazpacho might have come up again. Another problem, though, is that I never have a drink with soup. It's a rule my parents gave us as children. I don't know why. Everyone's childhood had its own weird rules that you never hear of anywhere else, right? Like public schools inventing their own daft words for sport or chapel? In our house, we weren't allowed to mix two breakfast cereals in the same bowl, weren't allowed to open Maltesers before a film started and we never had a drink with soup. I follow those rules superstitiously to this day. So, having soup on the hob, I didn't open a bottle of wine for the first time in at least 18 months. Naturally, I was in a bit of a bad mood.
(I know what you're thinking: wasn't it gazpacho? Aha, I only said the soup was on the hob. I didn't say the gas was on.)
It's difficult to eat cucumber gazpacho and read subtitles at the same time, unless you particularly want a damp green lap. Thus, a lot of my experience on the evening in question was not actually watching television but simply drinking spoonfuls of cold soup to the sound of bleak Korean screaming. If that's your idea of a great night, there's some good news for you on Netflix.
I didn't start with the new series, obviously. I started with series one, episode one. It's dreadful.
It starts well enough: a desperate gambler meets a mysterious man who offers to play a game with him. So at least it was relatable. I've been in that situation many times, and I love the fictional cliché, whether it's the creepy curates on the train in The Box of Delights or Damon Runyon's earful of cider. Caveat ludor! That's a message I always find appetising.
Unfortunately – as I expect you know, if you've paid any attention to the cultural conversation in the four years since Squid Game came out – this quickly descends, unlike The Box of Delights, into a harrowing dystopian gorefest. By the end of the first episode, we're watching hundreds of terrified people being plausibly gunned to death. And just to stop anyone but a sociopath from having a bit of distance on the damn thing, our trapped protagonist has a beautiful little daughter, and it's her birthday. Thanks everyone.
It made me so angry. Admittedly I found myself watching at a time of particular 'IRL' horror around the world (that's 'in real life', if you're the kind of cultural abstainer who doesn't already know the plot of Squid Game), but the world is always full of horror and I never want to be reminded that some people get a kick out of seeing that. (A lot of people do, if the ratings for Squid Game are anything to go by.)
There's a curious coda to this. The next day, for reasons I can't adequately explain, I found myself wanting to watch another episode. Despite having hated it, I felt a little craving for more. Something in the programme's DNA, clearly, has talent.
I switched on episode two: a number of coffins were being slid one by one into a furnace. A coffin lid creaked open and an anguished hand pushed its way out. A masked figure shoved the hand back in and hammered down the lid.
I had a sudden flashback to the foul taste of my first cigarette, many years ago, and the irresistible attraction of my second. The screen said 'Episode 2: Hell'.
I switched it off.