Squid Game: Season two reviews range from 'Sensational' to 'a ...

The first season of the South Korean drama followed a group of 456 people, desperate and in debt, fighting to the death for a huge cash prize.

This time around, the previous winner is joined by hundreds of new competitors who he tries to guide to safety.

The new episodes find the main character "hellbent on seeking revenge on the super-rich puppet-masters who engineered its deadly spectacle", according to the Guardian's Rebecca Nicholson, who awarded three stars., external

But the early episodes "feel like delaying tactics", she added, "and considering that this is Squid Game, it is all rather ordinary".

"When we get into the actual games, the smash-hit K-drama finds its feet," she noted. "But it spends far too many episodes dragging its heels extremely painfully."

Series three, which has already been commissioned for 2025, "must do better", she concluded.

"For all of its unevenness, particularly as it is warming up to the proper action, there is one big twist that really works, though whether it is distinct enough from what happens in the first series is unclear," wrote Nicholson.

"And when you think you know where it is going, it turns away from its trajectory, upping the ante and finding its feet. What a shame it takes so long to get there though."