Vincenzo

Our honest read on why this drama is worth your time — and who it’s for.

Song Joong-ki learned Italian for this role — and that small, unnecessary-but-completely-necessary detail tells you exactly what kind of drama Vincenzo is. A show that takes its premise absurdly seriously while never forgetting it’s also a spectacle. The first few episodes ask for patience: the comedy is broad, the legal wrangling is dense, and the central conflict takes time to clarify itself. Hold on until episode four. That’s when the show decides to stop apologising for what it is and fully commits — a revenge drama that operates entirely on its own logic, and that logic turns out to be enormously satisfying.

Ok Taec-yeon as Jang Han-seok is the drama’s genuinely unexpected gift. The character requires two modes — a performatively harmless persona and a genuinely terrifying one — and Taec-yeon executes the switch with precision. Whether this reads as a career-redefining performance or a well-executed one depends on what you’ve seen him in before. For anyone who’d written him off: this is the evidence. Kim Yeo-jin as Choi Myung-hee runs it close — a woman of pure, undisguised ambition who is never played for shock, only for scale.

Twenty episodes is a long runway, and the show doesn’t always use the extra space wisely — a few mid-run episodes meander when they should drive forward, and some of the courtroom theatrics outstay their welcome. But the ensemble at Geumga Plaza earns its screen time, and the final four episodes are among the most focused the show ever gets. The ending doesn’t wrap everything with a bow: Vincenzo walks away from something, not toward it. It’s a harder, more honest conclusion than most dramas this popular would risk. One of the definitive K-dramas of 2021. Earn it by getting through the first three episodes.