I started Beyond Evil expecting a dark, twisty crime drama. I got something even better. Because while the show delivers a solid thriller plot, at its heart it’s a love story. Not a romance, but a close character study of deeply traumatized people fighting like hell for justice, absolution, and each other. The entire cast is excellent, but the real fireworks happen whenever Shin Ha Kyun and Yeo Jin Goo are on screen together. Their frenemy partnership is one of the most explosive actor pairings I’ve seen in years, a raw, bruising encounter of open emotional wounds as two people from very different worlds discover just how similar they are.

Most murder mysteries focus on solving the crime, but this one explores the damage left behind – the way friendships and communities fray, the guilt of survivors, the difficulty of finding closure, the fact that neither vengeance nor arrests are ever really “enough.” The show also recognizes that atonement is an action taken, not a gift bestowed. It never lets its characters escape responsibility for their choices, but it also grants the option of redemption. There is a lot of darkness in this world, but it suggests that even at our most broken, we are worthy of love and capable of grace.