Isn’t it an absolute joy to watch smart people work together? Isn’t it an absolute delight to see these smart people handle complex topics with sensitivity and wit? If you just answered yes to these questions, I’ll make an educated guess that JTBC’s Beyond the Bar might just be your cup of tea.
Directed by Kim Jae-hong and written by former lawyer Park Mi-hyun, Beyond the Bar is a classic legal drama that spans 12 captivating episodes.
If you’re thinking to yourself, “wait, another run-of-the-mill legal drama?” Believe me, I get you. I wasn’t counting down the days to Beyond the Bar myself.
But what seemed to be just another legal drama became JTBC’s wild card โ a series that ended up surpassing any and all expectations you might have had for it. Beyond the Bar released its first episode to a 3.7% nationwide viewership rating while its finale saw 8.4% instead, jumping 5 incredible percentage points throughout its 12-episode run. The show also captured the attention of fans overseas: internationally, Beyond the Bar has been on Netflix Top 10 Global Non-English Shows for five consecutive weeks (at the time of writing).
Beyond the Bar follows the litigation team at Yullim Law Firm, led by the seemingly aloof but highly skilled Yun Seok-hun (Lee Jin-wook). Seok-hun is a demanding mentor and a reserved colleague, but heโs known for being excellent at his job. One day, Kang Hyo-min (Jung Chae-yeon), a passionate young lawyer, joins his department. She might be inexperienced, but she has a strong sense of justice and is keen to learn. Seok-hun and Hyo-min have two very different personalities, but their dedication to their work is just as intense.
This review is spoiler-free! But if you don’t have time to read it all, make sure to pin our summary at the bottom!
Love as the Thematic Core of Beyond the Bar
Beyond the Bar is indeed an impressive accomplishment for rookie writer Park, who managed to create a group of compelling, humane characters and set them in a story that isn’t afraid to examine the darkest facets of our society. Cleverly put together, Beyond the Bar succeeds in humanising lawyers, defendants, and plaintiffs through a sincere, understanding, and socially conscious narrative.
Beyond the Bar makes use of an excellent episodic structure where each instalment introduces us to a different case handled by the Yullim team while still advancing overarching storylines and character development. The heart of Beyond the Bar lies in these cases, which tackle heavy, complex subjects with kindness, courage, and nuance. Offering a thousand questions but never clear-cut answers, the series embraces moral ambiguity as a matter of course. It constantly navigates a lot of grey areas โ of what’s right, what’s fair, and what’s socially acceptable โ while illustrating how the law, as created by imperfect human beings, is very much flawed and open to a million different interpretations.
What brings all of these stories together is an emotion that is usually forgotten in legal dramas: love. Beyond the Bar is a story about love in all its shapes and sizes. In one way or another, every episode discusses how love resides at the core of everything we are and do โ be it familial, platonic, romantic, obsessive, or love for oneself. We’re naturally passionate beings and that echoes throughout every single one of our actions. Whether that love is selfish or selfless, changeable or constant, kind or ruthless โ this is what leads to our conflicts, wounds, and dilemmas.
The Yullim team shows an unyielding dedication to the letter of the law, but beyond the cold lines of contracts and legislations, they do their best to look at the defendants and plaintiffs sharing their courtrooms as three-dimensional individuals. They work to identify the essence of these people and their problems, finding their broken hearts and helping them put the pieces back together.
This process works as a mirror, allowing our protagonists to face their own demons and ghosts. Besides igniting and fuelling their character arcs, these cases ensure thematic consistency in Beyond the Bar by offering a narrative in which all elements support the story’s main theme.
Beyond Melodrama: Allowing Your Characters to Drive the Narrative
Beyond emotional resonance, these episodic challenges also offer a fairly realistic look at modern society, leading to some timely social commentary. But the element in Beyond the Bar that provides the strongest social critique is the show’s overarching storyline involving corruption within the Yullim ranks. Structured as a typical political intrigue story, this conflict doesn’t necessarily offer anything revolutionary, but it functions as an effective tool for the critique of nepotism, favouritism, and prejudice in the workplace.
Even though the script does have its slips, what makes it all work is that nothing ever happens by miracle or coincidence. The plot is built on the “tension of cause and effect,” and our protagonists drive the events. There are no melodramatic backstabs, no unstoppable, all-powerful villain: the narrative of Beyond the Bar is guided by a group of brilliant, attentive characters who are always communicating and planning each and every move carefully. That results in a satisfying, cohesive experience in which we are able to connect emotionally and intellectually with the story being told.
There are no easy answers in Beyond the Bar, but, in the end, these answers are never more important than the process of discovery that leads us towards them. As they face their clients, the Yullim litigation team has to work together and learn from each other in order to achieve their goals. The outcome is a marvellously stimulating dynamic between our characters, creating a mentoring process in which both mentors and mentees are highly intelligent and capable.
Beyond Seok-hun and Hyo-min, it’s wonderful to see the training process and the teamwork that brings lawyers Lee Jin-u (Lee Hak-joo), Heo Min-jeong (Jeon Hye-bin), Ji Guk-yeon (Kim Kang-min), Choi Ho-yeon (Lee Ju-yeon) and O Sang-cheol (Pyo Jae-gyeom) together. Ji, Choi, and O are supporting characters that bring liveliness to the Yullim office, balancing the darkness of the story with some much-needed positivity.
Beyond the Bar: A Story Led by Women
While Seok-hun has a sharp perspective, a kind soul, and an intricate and engaging personality, Beyond the Bar stands out for its extraordinary female characters, without whom this narrative just wouldn’t move forward. Our leading lady Hyo-min is bright, outspoken, and keen to defend her values. Beyond the Bar is very much Hyo-min’s show, actually. What’s more, her relationship with her childhood friends, Seol-a (Kwon Ah-reum) and Ji-eun (Lee Seung-yeon), is a perfect example of a supportive, healthy female friendship.
While Hyo-min represents the experience of a younger woman, Attorney Heo offers a character who is just as complex and clever but who illustrates a different kind of background. As an older professional who had to reinvent herself, Heo shines a light on a different kind of female experience in society. The same applies to Hyo-min’s mother, Eun-hui (Yoon Yoo-sun), whose character is given several layers that are explored throughout the show. Finally, we must also mention Attorney Kwon Na-yeon (Kim Yeo-jin), the bold, capable, and confident mentor to Seok-hun who returns to break Yullim apart and rebuild it from scratch.
Strengths & Weaknesses: The Technical Side
These characters succeed not only thanks to the script, but also because performances are exceptional all across the board. At last, Lee Jin-wook has found a role that suits him perfectly and, following her fantastic work in JTBC’s Family by Choice last year, Jung Chae-yeon returns with a triumphant, magnetic interpretation. Whether or not romance was the right dynamic for these two, Lee and Jung work extremely well together, with their chemistry and timing always in absolute sync. Their evening conversations over tea make for some of the series’ greatest scenes, without a shadow of a doubt. Lee Hak-joo and Jeon Hye-bin also shine bright as our second lead characters, oozing charisma and appeal.
While product placement is often blatant, Beyond the Bar is beautifully and cleverly shot, especially in its first half. With animated sequences and artistic compositions, the narrative is presented in an incredibly engaging and visually creative way. As the episodes go by, however, this creativity slowly disappears, giving way to more conventional, but still polished and effective, cinematography.
One technical element that combines a great script, great directing, and great performances is a curious technique the show uses throughout to amp up audience expectation and engagement. Often, Beyond the Bar silences important dialogues to only reveal them later. So, first, we watch the scene without the lines, forcing us to rely on the actors’ facial expressions and body language to try to guess what is happening. Only later do we revisit that moment, now with the necessary dialogue audible to us. That goes to show how Beyond the Bar is the kind of series that trusts its characterisation but, most importantly, trusts its audience to follow the subtlety and subtext of its narrative (I’d make an exception for the last episode, which was a lot more literal than the previous instalments).
Visual effects are still the weak spot of most K-dramas โ and Beyond the Bar is no exception. But they aren’t used often enough to ruin anyone’s experience. I’d also add that make-up, in particular in the episodes portraying Attorney Ho’s backstory, could’ve been better. Lastly, editing, especially with the use of weirdly placed parallel editing, can create a confusing, unnatural perception of time passing (or not passing) at times, but it works well to establish the pacing of the story.
Should You Watch Beyond the Bar?
Witty, empathetic, and spellbinding, Beyond the Bar follows tvN’s Law and the City in invigorating the legal drama genre. Bold and sharp in its social commentary, this is a narrative guided by proactive, smart characters who take charge of their own reality and future. As they arbitrate the disputes of their clients, the Yullim litigation team invites us to observe the world around us with more attentive and understanding eyes. They ask us to face our own flaws, doubts, and wounds. But, above all, Beyond the Bar offers us a thousand questions about life, love, and society, reminding us that, while none of us really has the answers, what really matters is our drive to keep looking for them.
You can watch Beyond the Bar on:
Leave a Reply