“Vincenzo” opens with a Korean-Italian mafia consigliere flying home to Seoul to dig up a fortune. It ends 20 episodes later as one of the most-watched dramas in tvN’s history. The pitch sounds like a mess. The execution is not.
The series stars Song Joong-ki as Vincenzo Cassano, born Park Joo-hyung, adopted at eight by an Italian family, later taken in by Don Fabio of the Cassano Family after that family dies in an accident. He becomes a lawyer and Fabio’s right-hand man. When Fabio dies, his biological son Paolo tries to kill Vincenzo out of jealousy, and Vincenzo flees to Seoul.
Trailer, via Netflix K-Content.
A gold stash under Geumga Plaza
His reason for staying is money. Vincenzo helped a now-dead Chinese tycoon hide gold bullion worth ₩150 billion, about $110 million, in a basement under Geumga Plaza, a commercial building. To get it out, he has to demolish the place. Babel Group, a subsidiary of a large pharmaceutical corporation, has illegally taken ownership of the building and wants the same demolition — for a business tower, not for gold.
That collision is the engine of the show. Vincenzo will not let the gold fall to Babel, so he has to take the building back.
Geumga Plaza is also where the show keeps its strangest asset: the tenants. Among them is the Jipuragi Law Firm, run by Hong Yoo-chan. Vincenzo’s interests line up with his. Hong Yoo-chan’s daughter, Hong Cha-young, played by Jeon Yeo-been, starts on the other side, as an attorney at Wusang, the firm that defends Babel.
Hong Yoo-chan dies in the street
Then Babel’s top legal advisor orders Hong Yoo-chan murdered in the middle of the street. Cha-young resigns in a rage, takes over Jipuragi, and teams up with Vincenzo to bring Babel down.
It is a clean turn, and the show earns it. The revenge plot gives Vincenzo a reason to stay past the gold, and it gives Cha-young a reason to fight rather than grieve.
The cast around Song is deep. Ok Taec-yeon plays Jang Joon-woo, also known as Jang Han-seok. Kim Yeo-jin is Choi Myung-hee. Kwak Dong-yeon is Jang Han-seo. Cho Han-chul plays Han Seung-hyuk, Im Cheol-soo is An Gi-seok, Yoon Byung-hee is Nam Joo-sung, and Kim Yoon-hye is Seo Mi-ri. Choi Young-jun plays Cho Yeong-un, Yang Kyung-won is Lee Cheol-wook, and Seo Ye-hwa is Jang Yeon-jin.
The show runs the genres it was sold on:
- Action & Adventure
- Comedy
- Drama
- Crime
That mix is the whole gamble. A mafia lawyer, a gold heist and a pharmaceutical conglomerate should not sit in the same hour as comedy, and the show knows it. It plays the absurdity straight and lets the cruelty land.
The numbers back it up
The ratings say the audience followed. The first episode drew a 7.7% rating (AGB nationwide), the fourth highest-rated tvN drama premiere at the time. The final episode hit 14.6%, the eighteenth highest-rated drama in Korean cable television history, and made Vincenzo the sixth highest-rated drama in tvN’s own history.
It aired on tvN every Saturday and Sunday at 21:00 KST, from February 20 to May 2, 2021. It streams on Netflix.
International viewers found it there. The series held a spot in Netflix’s global top 10 TV shows since its start and reached fourth rank on April 26. It ranked fourth on Forbes’ list of the most-viewed Korean series on Netflix in 2021.
For a show built on a Korean-Italian lawyer exacting revenge with a side of justice, that reach is the real story. The premise travels because the grievance does: a conglomerate takes what isn’t its own, and someone with the skills to answer it answers.
What holds up, and what to watch
The strongest choice is Vincenzo himself. Song plays a man who is competent, patient and genuinely dangerous, and the show never asks him to soften into a hero. He wants his gold. He gets pulled into something larger. The writing keeps both motives in view.
Cha-young is the second pillar. Her arc from Wusang attorney to Jipuragi partner is the show’s spine, and it works because the murder of her father is not a footnote. It is the reason she switches sides.
The weakness is length. Twenty episodes is a lot of building for a premise this simple, and the middle stretches. The Babel machinery — the subsidiary, the illegal takeover, the legal advisor calling the kill — is more interesting in outline than in every scene it gets.
Still, the parts that matter hold. The show is funny when it wants to be, cold when it needs to be, and it never loses track of the gold under the floor.
Vincenzo is not a subtle series. It is a confident one, and confidence is harder to fake over 20 episodes than any single twist. The score reflects that.
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