Stream It Or Skip It?

It doesn’t matter what country makes the show; legal procedurals work from the same playbook. The lawyers all have their continuing personal stories, but it’s the cases that come across their desks, many of them somewhat outlandish, that get the most story attention. We see that in a new law procedural from South Korea.

Opening Shot: The hustle and bustle of people commuting to work in Seoul.

The Gist: Kang Hyo-min (Jung Chae-yeon) is on her way to an interview with the huge and prestigious Yullim law firm, but is distracted by a book left on the subway seat next to her, and she misses her stop. She’s two-minutes late to her turn in the group interview, she has a stain on her shirt that she covered in correction fluid, and her shoes are scuffed.

One of the partners, litigation department head, Yoon Seok-hoon (Lee Jin-wook), wants to eliminate her immediately, but the others overrule him when one of them reminds them that not only did she win the National Law School Mock Trial, but that she had an offer on the table from a rival firm. When they bring her back in with the last group of interviewees, her answers to their hypothetical law scenario questions are sophisticated and nuanced, especially for a newbie.

She’s hired over Yoon’s objections, and during induction, the new group of attorneys get to pick which department they want to work in. No one ever chooses Yoon’s litigation department, much to the chagrin of associates Lee Jin-woo (Lee Hak-joo) and Heo Min-jeong (Jeon Hye-bin), mainly because Yoon doesn’t promise anything but a lot of work and long hours. Kang chooses the department anyway; she’s the only one who made it her first choice.

Even Yoon can see that Kang’s dedication to litigation should be rewarded, so he gives her the best initial case, which is observing a gas company’s shareholder’s meeting for procedural errors. She sees something in the company’s P&L that she finds strange, and goes to a bathhouse that is a big customer of the gas company to look into it more. That keeps her out of work, which earns her punishment from Yoon. But she also finds that the bathhouse has been manipulating their usage numbers, leading to a huge payout to them.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Beyond The Bar is essentially a case-of-the-week show, along the lines of Matlock (the new version), with some continuing personal stories mixed in.

Our Take: Unlike a lot of K-dramas that seem to intermix romance with workplace drama, we get the feeling that Beyond The Bar is going to stay to mostly court cases, highlighting how talented of a litigator Kang Hyo-min is. Even by the end of the first episode, she’s already impressed Yoon Seok-hoon, but we know that he has to follow the “cold, tough boss” playbook, so he won’t show how impressed he is for many episodes.

The show is a pretty standard legal procedural, even if there is some personal drama involving both Kang and Yoon. Yoon may have been hardened by the loss of the love of his life, and as we see in the last scene of the first episode, Kang has some separation trauma in her childhood. We also know that she really wants to downplay that she’s the daughter of a prominent judge and a well-known law professor, which her boyfriend seems to want to brag about to anyone who will listen.

It’ll be interesting to see the cases that come across Kang’s desk in upcoming episodes; the second episode has to do with someone who broke into a fertility clinic. How things develop between Kang and Yoon as the cases move along will go a long way to determining whether we hang on with this show or not.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Kang wakes up from a scary dream about a separation that happened when she was little.

Sleeper Star: Jeon Hye-bin’s character Heo Min-jeong is supposedly such a strong attorney that she even has the division head, a named partner, taking orders from her.

Most Pilot-y Line: The gas company case was a bit confusing, and it cut straight to the trial against the bathhouse manager. But it did lead to Kang giving an impassioned speech about how cheating the big gas company affects the people who work for it and the other small businesses who are their customers.

Our Call: STREAM IT. As we said, Beyond The Bar is more or less a straightforward legal procedural, with an appealing cast and interesting cases.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.