[HanCinema's News] "Under the Queen's Umbrella" Takes up the Mantle of tvN Surprise Hit

Last week "Little Women" concluded a successful run with ratings of 11.1% in its final episode. The success of "Little Women" masked a greater reality for tvN, however. While the network is currently running four scripted television dramas, only "Little Women" has been particularly successful. And its successor "Under the Queen's Umbrella" had an unusual concept. The Joseon historical drama stars Kim Hye-soo as a royal matriarch trying to give her mostly adults sons a properly regal education.

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"Under the Queen's Umbrella" is similar to "Little Women" in that its merging of genres make the story difficult to clearly describe. Nevertheless, "Under the Queen's Umbrella" is already off to a very strong performance. The first episode on October 15th had ratings of 7.5%, with the second episode on October 16th further improving that to 9.1%. These are already much better numbers than "Little Women" had in the earlier parts of its runs.

"Under the Queen's Umbrella" also has better ratings than the other three currently running tvN dramas put together. "Love in Contract" had 3.6% ratings in its eighth episode on October 13th, while "Blind - 2022" had 2.6% ratings in its tenth episode on October 15th. "Mental Coach Jegal" had 1.4% ratings in its eleventh episode on October 17th, an all-time low. All of these dramas have sixteen episode production runs, and tvN will be stuck with them for some time.

"Little Women" had a more conservative twelve-episode production run. "Under the Queen's Umbrella" has a sixteen episode production run, although ironically its more ambitious slate was likely approved under the same logic that greenlit "Poong, the Joseon Psychiatrist" earlier this year despite that historical fusion drama's own underwhelming performance. "Poong, the Joseon Psychiatrist" is getting a second season with its closing 5.1% ratings still well above average for the network.

Another topic of interest for "Under the Queen's Umbrella" is whether it will do as well as "Little Women" did on Netflix worldwide. "Little Women" has earned over eighty million viewed hours worldwide on Netflix according to the streaming platform's official figures. But as of yet, it's still too early to say whether "Under the Queen's Umbrella" will hit a similar chord with international viewers.

Written by William Schwartz

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"Under the Queen's Umbrella" is directed by Kim Hyeong-sik, written by Park Ba-ra, and features Kim Hye-soo, Kim Hae-sook, Choi Won-young, Moon Sang-min, Bae In-hyuk, Yoon Sang-hyeon. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2022/10/15~Now airing, Sat, Sun 21:10 on tvN.