
King the Land has skyrocketed to an impressive No.3 on IMDb’s Most Popular TV Shows chart but with a surprisingly low star rating.
While other big-name series like The Witcher, The Bear, Black Mirror, and Jack Ryan are rocking star ratings in the 8s, King the Land has found itself struggling with a score of 2.1.
The cause for this disparity appears to be due to the RECENT controversy surrounding the portrayal of an Arab prince character in the show, which triggered an outpouring of complaints from Arab viewers.
The production team acted fast in response, issuing not one, but two apologies, promising to fix things by removing those problematic scenes from the show. However, the IMDb rating took a nosedive after episodes 7 and 8 aired, with one-star ratings and user reviews pointing out the specific scene in the show.
One viewer wrote, “The decision to cast an Indian actor as a prince from Saudi Arabia raises eyebrows and leaves a sour taste in the mouth of viewers who expect accurate representation.” The user further explained that the character’s depiction in the show could potentially harm the perception and understanding of Arab people by reinforcing negative stereotypes and misrepresentations. Other users left similar reviews like, “They not only introduced an Arab prince using an actor who is not Arab himself, but they also proceeded to offend Arab culture on a large scale,” and “My issues with this drama was the way they portrayed Arab people, was really disrespectful hope the writers and production team apologize for this.”


Online pundits now speculate that the controversy surrounding King the Land contributed significantly to its rise to the 3rd rank on IMDb.

Despite the storm, King the Land has achieved an impressive No. 5 spot on FlixPatrol’s list of most-watched Netflix shows. The series has also become the second most-viewed Netflix series in Saudi Arabia, first in Morocco, fourth in Kuwait, and third in Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman.
