Summary
Mad Unicorn tells a lively true story about Thailand’s first “unicorn” startup, full of likeable characters and fun moments.
A unicorn in a business context refers to a privately owned startup company valued at over a billion dollars. Whether it’s mad or not seems to be irrelevant, but when you’re talking about that kind of value, the madness is inevitably implied. Anyway, this is important context for the Thai Netflix series aptly titled Mad Unicorn, which tells the true story of Thailand’s first unicorn startup and the young entrepreneur who made it his personal mission to stick it to the man with its success.
Creative license has been applied, of course. Award-winning director Nottapon Boonprakob has reimagined the story as a surprisingly feel-good underdog story with cartoonishly arch corporate villains, a pretty love interest, and a bunch of really likeable supporting players. At seven hour-long episodes, it’s an energetic binge with a lot of mainstream crowd appeal, even though it’s set within Bangkok’s very specific commercial climate.
For all I know, the true story of Komsan Saelee and his e-commerce logistics company Flash Express might follow along very similar lines, but I’d take leave to doubt it. Mad Unicorn is finely calibrated for a TV audience and knows how to manage the peaks and valleys of its rags to riches story so that you can’t help but hit “play next episode” to see how the next crisis is dealt with, even if the nature of the plot makes it pretty obvious who’s eventually going to come out on top.
That’d be Santi (Ice-Natara Nopparatayapon), a young man from extreme poverty whose unique perspective and fluent Mandarin allow him to devise a genius strategy for a delivery company that is promptly stolen by ruthless businessman Kanin (Ek-Thaneth Warakulnukroh). Ostracised in favour of Kanin’s own son, Santi instead sets up a competing service with the help of financial expert – and love interest – Xiaoyu (Janeyeh Jiranorraphat) and socially inept coding prodigy Ruijie (Dr. Palang Rocksilp). Their efforts to secure investment and then handle the logistics of a rapidly growing enterprise that is being constantly sabotaged by Kanin’s company form the remainder of the season, along with the complicating social dynamics among the core cast and Santi’s difficult younger brother.
The leads have great chemistry, which helps, but all of the cast rise to the challenge admirably, even those playing somewhat underdeveloped supporting characters who are necessarily shunted into the margins by the focus on the technological David and Goliath story at the show’s core. The only players who feel noticeably two-dimensional are the villains, which is understandable since they’re really just stand-ins for moustache-twirling corporate villainy in general. Mad Unicorn doesn’t suffer for that, since the difficulty of one humble guy taking on established and ruthless businessmen is central to the show’s identity, and a big part of the reason why it’s so easy to get invested in.
And it is surprisingly easy to get invested in. Despite a mild dramatic lull in some of the middle chapters – this is another Netflix original that slightly overstays its welcome, but not like Dept. Q, which came out on the same day and could have done with being three episodes shorter – you’ll likely breeze through this all the way to the end with little difficulty. The relatable themes and characters and impressively orchestrated plot all work well together, and it’s nice to have a reminder that sometimes the good guys do win, even in real life.
