Sarcastic Series Review: Beyond Evil

We live in strange times. As someone who primarily enjoys western productions over everything else, it has been strange seeing almost every new show that America makes have some level of its political climate crammed into it. The problem with playing politics in your shows whose primary function is to entertain is that it often comes at the expense of the story. Also the message comes off as either forced or often pandering.

But luckily America is not the only country that offers high quality productions anymore, and that’s where the Korean drama’s come into play.

Now, at the time of writing I have only seen 3 Korean productions and I’ll admit it’s not perfect. There’s a certain campiness to it that is often annoying and yes overacting and confusion due to certain cultural differences exist, but damn are these some good-looking shows.

From cinematography, to set design and wardrobe these shows have really stepped up the game far beyond most other Asian productions. And perhaps most importantly the shows, however clichéd or campy they may be are very story and character focused.

Enter ‘Beyond Evil’ the new thriller drama from Korea you can catch on Netflix right now. It’s primarily a serial killer murder mystery set in a small town, with about ten major characters and everyone is a suspect.

Now Beyond Evil is a show that could have been great. There’s a loaded statement so let me explain. The show is brilliant at intrigue and better than most Netflix originals I’ve seen lately, but it goes on for too long.

There is a point in the show, which will be very evident if you watch it around episode 8 or 9 where they should have ended the series and it would have been brilliant, instead they drag it on for 16 episodes, forcing in so many twists and turns and sheer unbelievable coincidences for the sake of “Drama” that it really detracts from the overall goodwill the early episodes had.

This still gets a recommendation, but maybe stops watching after episode 9 if you are the type of person who can stop a series mid story (I am not)

The Plot

The story revolves around 2 police officers: Lee Dong-sik, an older officer with a slightly suspect past in which he was the primary suspect for his sisters murder 20 years ago and Han Joo-won, an officer who transfers himself to the small town police unit to investigate a killing that bares resemblance to the killings that occurred 20 years ago, and also the prettiest man in the world!