Dramas like
The Devil Judge

An antihero who uses the system's own theatre against it. Same 2021 appetite for a magnetic man doing indefensible things with total style, the same interest in punishment as performance, and the same trick of making you cheer before you have decided whether you should. Difference: a black comedy with a much lighter touch, and it never asks you to doubt him.

Slow start Episode 3, when the Geumga Plaza tenants stop being obstacles and become his crew.

A two-hander where the pleasure is not knowing which of them is worse. Two men circling each other for sixteen episodes, every conversation a test, and a script that withholds on purpose instead of by accident. Difference: a rural police mystery at heavy 5 with no dystopia and no spectacle, so the tension is intimate and grim rather than televised.

Slow start Episode 3, the point at which you stop trusting both leads at once.

Punishment offered as a service, and a small crew that becomes a family. Same premise that the courts do not deliver and somebody has to, and the same satisfaction when it lands on the right person. Difference: episodic and far warmer, with no rivalry at the centre and no interest in whether the man dispensing it is dangerous.

Hooks early Episode 1. The format is fully established inside the first case.

A bench that believes punishment is the point. Same argument about what a court is actually for, made by somebody cold enough to be frightening and rigorous enough to be right about it. Difference: no spectacle and no chemistry, heavy 5, and it is documentary-flat where this is operatic.

Hooks early Episode 1, and it is the hardest case in the series. Nothing later is easier to sit through, and the show never lets up.

Mentor and protege, and one of them is a monster. Same structure of a brilliant senior figure and the younger person shaped by them, and the same charge in every scene the two of them share. Difference: a medical thriller at a much smaller scale, with a hospital rather than a state as the institution being indicted.

Slow start Episode 3, when the mentor and the protege stop circling and start operating on each other, figuratively and otherwise. Episode 4 is the peak.

Monster or cure, asked as a plot mechanism. Same question sitting at the centre of the show and the same willingness to make that question uncomfortable to hold for sixteen episodes. Difference: a serial-killer procedural at heavy 5 with no institution and no rivalry, and it reorganises itself around one early turn.

Hooks early Episode 2, once the killer and the two men chasing him are locked into the same story.