Beyond Evil is a compelling thriller, aptly once described as a combination of Hannibal and Sherlock. Which feels like a very good description. In BE the two main characters creep you out - they both are suspicious as hell in the beginning and you're also getting gaslit into thinking they're murderers. Rather than Hannibal where the murderer gaslights the detective into believing he's innocent and then frames him in BE both detectives manipulate each other into believing the other one is a murderer - or rather, they let the other one think it in order to achieve their own goals.
Lee Dongsik whose sister had been killed 20 years ago is working in the police to catch the murderer and bring justice to victims of similar crimes. Of course his best idea of doing this is incredibly fucked up and an incredibly dangerous plan to incriminate the actual murderer and force him into revealing himself and enough evidence to get himself arrested. He knows the law well - if there's no body, there's no case. On the other hand young(er) Han Juwon, the son of the next police general comissioner, is convinced Lee Dongsik is guilty and killed his sister and all the other victims. And his primary drive here has also become guilt because by inducing a sting operation on his own, he had caused the death of one of the victims. They both find out each other's secrets and dig around for evidence and their relationship goes from Han Juwon suspecting Lee Dongsik to the horrible realization that Han Juwon's own father is the one guilty for the death and disappearance of Lee Dongsik's sister 20 years ago. Han Juwon then decides to abandon all his usual strategies and incriminate his father at any cost.
But that's enough about the plot. The obvious elephant in the room is the tension between the two leads. In not giving either of the male leads a female love interest (as k-dramas love to do) and making the whole series about their relationship, an accidental queerbait was created. And was it delicious to watch. Now don't get me wrong - I, like any other respectable gay, like to watch explicitly gay stuff. Queerbait is like... so 2012 and yet it's so rare to see between two main characters with no other romance obstructing it in Korean media that I'm actually happy. If this means that Korea is catching up to these trends in western shows, in a few years we might actually get high-production dramas with gay main characters. Maybe even a kiss. Let me dream. Also there's something so delicious about queerbaits where the "will they won't they" makes you wonder until the last moment.
There's an easy explanation as to how they accidentally made it gay. I'm sure that by making the two main characters be 12? 13? years apart in age they thought the vibe we get from them would be more of a "son-father" thing... I mean they really underestimated the hype for DILFs. Plus the age difference is really not that much considering Han Juwon is almost 30 years old.