Three Idiots in Kenya

The Art of Traveling 6,000 Miles Just to Bicker

What I've always liked about Na Yeong-seok's variety universe is its weird relationship to time. Most reality TV burns in the present tense, but his shows are built on jokes that can take years to finish detonating. *Three Idiots in Kenya* is a perfect example. Long ago, during *New Journey to the West*, Super Junior's Cho Kyu-hyun won a trip to a giraffe-themed lodge in Kenya as part of a throwaway gag. Most programs would have left it there. Instead, in 2025, Netflix delivered a six-episode series whose whole existence is basically the punchline finally arriving.



There is something extremely funny about dropping three middle-aged entertainers into the Maasai Mara, surrounding them with staggering scenery and wild animals, and then watching them spend half their time sniping at each other over Mafia. That's the show's central joke and its real charm. Co-directed by Kim Ye-seul, it has almost no interest in becoming a prestige travel series. Local food and landscapes do get their moments, but the real project is using Kenya's grandeur as a lavish backdrop for the same petty arguments these men have been rehearsing together for years.

If you're not already tuned to Lee Su-geun, Eun Ji-won, and Kyuhyun, the chemistry can initially feel abrasive. Lee has the body language of a man permanently tired of everyone else's nonsense; his shoulders alone could deliver punchlines. Eun plays the restless instigator in the middle, and Kyuhyun toggles between hyper-capable youngest brother and complete disaster. The whole show nearly bends around the episode where he loses his phone and his usually polished idol calm evaporates on contact with panic.



A lot of the conversation around the show has centered on whether it does enough with its setting. *Primetimer* criticized it for "adhering too closely to familiar patterns," which is a fair observation. The producers really have swapped rural Korea for the Kenyan savanna without abandoning their house style. The zombie game is still the zombie game. The fights with the crew still sound like old arguments in a new time zone.

But I don't think that's necessarily a weakness. Kim Ye-seul addressed that exact complaint by saying, "Some may ask if we're just repeating what's been done before," but "we stuck closely to the original concept from the start". That choice makes sense to me. The comfort is the point. Watching the three of them play some improvised logic exercise where one has to be a lion, another a giraffe, and another a tree is funny precisely because the landscape is so outsized while their concerns remain stubbornly small.



And then, every so often, the show lets the scenery actually land. The giraffe-feeding scene with Kyuhyun—the image that effectively started this whole project—has a sweetness that cuts through the irony. The animal lowers its head, the frame suddenly turns beautiful, and the squabbling just stops for a second. In that pause, you can feel Na Yeong-seok's long-running affection for these people. *Three Idiots in Kenya* isn't really about discovery. It's about what a gift it is to age beside your friends, travel absurd distances with them, and find out the old jokes still work.