TV For the Record Books. More Netflix.

I really don't know how or why I stumbled onto "Extraordinary Attorney Woo," but it just sort of happened.

This series, which has just completed its first very compacted season of 16 episodes (it started this past June, and two episodes per week were shown), is South Korean, and it's the story of an autistic woman who also has an eidetic memory, and for some unexplained reason, decides to become a lawyer.  She has an odd and incisive way of looking at things, and she graduated at the top of her class.  She joins what is presented as one of the two top law firms in Seoul, and, for the first season, is a "rookie."

The CEO of this firm is a superficially charming, but subtly conniving, woman, and the CEO of the other top firm is about as equally superficially charming, but a somewhat less subtly conniving, woman who also, as it is revealed before long in this series, is the biological mother of the autistic lawyer.  She made a bit of mischief with a male fellow student in law school, took an unexplained break for a year while she was pregnant, and resumed her studies, rising to CEO of the competing firm.  She immediately gave her newborn daughter to the newborn's father, on condition that he keep her, rear her, and make sure her path never crosses with that of her biological mother, who later married someone, and had a son.

"Attorney Woo" describes herself as being "on the autism spectrum," but she's reasonably deep onto that "spectrum."  This is, of course, fiction, and the writers can say whatever they want, and rely heavily or not so heavily on guidance from whoever is their consulting psychiatrist.

There are lots of stories that evolve and overlap during this first season, but one thing that is consistent is Attorney Woo's talent for looking at the law, which she remembers photographically, sort of like Benedict Cumberbatch's "Sherlock's" "mind palace," in her unique way, and is somehow always the lawyer who comes up with the winning strategy.

I'm not going to describe the side stories that evolve, because that would cheat you out of the pleasure of watching this series.  It should be noted, though, that the series is in Korean, the actors often speak fast, and the translation comes and goes quickly, so you miss a noteworthy amount of the dialogue, unless you happen to speak Korean.  I myself happen not to.  But you don't fail to follow the gist and many of the details of what's going on.

The acting is generally speaking spectacular.  Attorney Woo is played by some 20-something woman who had been a child actress earlier in her life, and she becomes this autistic legal savant like Noomi Rapace became the antisocial but brilliant "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo."  I've never seen Park Eun-bin ("Attorney Woo") in anything else, and I don't know if she speaks English.  But Noomi Rapace does, and her real self is a very far cry from "Lizbeth Salander."  Park Eun-bin was off the charts.  Pretty much everyone else was terrific.

I really don't know anything about Korea, and certainly not about things like the legal system there, but I have to say that as dim a view as I take of the American legal system and courts, I was very impressed at how civilized, orderly but not suppressingly rigid, fair, decent, and respectful was the Korean legal system as portrayed in this series.  Judges ask questions of witnesses, and seem to take a real interest in adequate information and proper development.  (Again, this is fiction, so I don't know if the Korean legal system is as portrayed.)  Of course, the lawyers were very focused on getting other people's money, as they are here (the English word they use for their fee is "commission," but there's no shortage of making bank).  But apart from that, they were largely portrayed as at least recognizing the larger issues, even if their representations of their clients often led them not to accommodate those larger issues.  But issues like fairness and a civilized, decent, caring, and respectful society were not uncommonly mentioned.

If you can deal with the technical problems (language, quickly disappearing subtitles, etc), this is really an amazing series to watch.  Sometimes, it has a cute or even silly quality to it, but they do handle some very complex and thought-provoking issues.  Although if you can get through episodes 2 and 16 without shedding a tear, you're not human, so maybe it wouldn't be worth your time.  The legal cases are mostly unrelated to each other from one episode to the next, but the side stories have arcs and evolutions, so if you do watch this, you probably want to watch it in sequence from episode 1 to episode 16.  Each episode is an hour.