I started eighth grade in 1959; during the year I started a new club at Westwood Junior High – a lawyer’s club. I doubt any other school had such a club, but it was due in part to my fascination with the TV show, Perry Mason. The show motivated me to read the actual books by Erle Stanley Gardner. I have been fascinated by books with courtroom drama or legal thrillers ever since. Of course, nearly all such books involved a murder, and in Mason’s case, the clients were always innocent!
Unusual -but good!- plots for courtroom dramas
This month I have been watching The Extraordinary Attorney Woo on Netflix. None of the first twelve cases (episodes) handled by the show’s featured legal team are about murder. Instead these courtroom dramas involve inheritances, suing to stop construction of a major highway, a divorce case, defending a kidnapper who claims to lead the Children’s Liberation Army, a wedding dress malfunction lawsuit, and a copyright infringement lawsuit. Boring? Not at all! Instead, I thought each episode had an interesting presentation of witnesses and evidence with a surprise twist ending.
The Extraordinary Attorney Woo is actually a 2022 South Korean television series. It follows Woo Young-woo, a female rookie attorney with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who is hired by a major law firm in Seoul. Being different from her neurotypical peers, her manner of communication is seen by them as odd, awkward, and blunt. But with each legal case, and through her intelligence and photographic memory, she becomes an increasingly competent attorney.
Over the summer in Korea, the 16-episode production became the 7th highest rated drama in Korean cable television history. Meanwhile, The series was the most viewed non-English show globally on Netflix for the weeks of July 4 to 10 and July 11 to 17, logging 23.9 million and 45.5 million hours viewed, respectively.
It’s more than good courtroom drama…
The portrayal of an attorney that is on the autism spectrum is unusual, but there are such people. On the other hand, very, very few people are savants with photographic memory, never mind also on the spectrum. After watching many episodes, I read up on some critiques of the show’s portrayal of autism such as this one by Geoffrey Bunting.
In addition to the suspenseful and quite emotional courtroom dramas, the intriguing portrayal of a young professional woman on the autism spectrum, there is also romance. It evolves very slowly through the episodes. It is touching. But (as Mike told me recently) there is the tendancy to make romance overly sweet and sugary in productions from east Asia.
Regardless, if you want to watch a different sort of courtroom drama series, one with no violence but unusual legal plots, I definitely recommend this entertaining series.
I finished all 16 episodes of Season 1; very enjoyable. Have you tries the first 2-3 episodes? What do YOU think? Another Season has been commissioned but won’t be available until 2024.