WELL, THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY.. (BEEF)

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You probably think HBO's 'Succession' is the most brutally funny drama on TV and you'd be right.

But what's this?

Netflix has thrust forward a pretender to its crown?

Lee Sung Jin's 'Beef' has been whipping up a storm on social media ever since it landed on the streaming service this month and you can understand why.

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To some, it's a withering study of millennial rage.

To others, it's a razor sharp parody of the search for spiritual fulfilment in California's empty secular society.

Some reviewers have noticed it tackles intergenerational trauma - particularly among Asian Americans.

Others have picked up on the class war at the heart of the drama.

The fact is 'Beef' is all these things.

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Lee Sung Jin's ten episode series centres around a feud that starts in a Los Angeles parking lot and escalates to absurd levels.

Steven Yuen's struggling Korean American contractor Danny Cho has failed to return some hibachi grills at a hardware store.

Cheesed off that he has to go back home and look for his receipt, he is backing out of his parking space when he almost hits a white SUV.

The occupant slams on the horn and then flips the bird at him.

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Consumed by road rage, Danny starts pursuing the SUV and almost crashes, mounting the pavement in a residential area and landing in a front garden.

As the SUV triumphantly disappears, he memorises the number plate.

The driver is Ali Wong's Amy Lau, a Chinese American entrepreneur married to Joseph Lee's sculptor and stay at home dad, George - the son of a now deceased and much respected Japanese American artist.

Amy is on the cusp of selling her successful plant selling business Koyohaus to Maria Bello's insanely wealthy home improvement store magnate, Jordan.

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She hopes the deal will enable her to spend more time with her and George's bright young daughter, Remy Holt's Junie.

However getting the deal over the line is a protracted affair, with Jordan insisting she really wants to get to know Amy first before investing.

While Amy lives in a modernist house in Calabasas, Danny scrapes by in a LA motel that his parents once owned but lost thanks to the dodgy dealings of his cousin, David Choe's Isaac.

A wheeler and dealer whose not afraid to break the law, Isaac has just got out of prison and is still fixated with get rich quick schemes - even lending Danny money and offering him business advice.

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Danny also has a fractious relationship with his younger brother, Young Mazino's Paul, a gamer who is very wary of Isaac.

Paul lives with Danny in the motel.

He likes to pump iron and also invests in cryptocurrencies.

Obsessing about the road rage incident, Danny tracks down Amy's address after entering her numberplate.

He calls at her house, pretending to be a helpful handyman and when she lets him in, he exacts revenge by urinating all over her bathroom floor.

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When Amy realises what he has done, this fuels a series of events that will see their feud bitterly escalate.

However their obsession with harming and humiliating each other will have devastating consequences not just for them but their family and friends.

With its predominantly Asian American cast, 'Beef' builds on the growing appetite among Western audiences for Asian stories.

Coming on the back of the success in recent years of 'Crazy Rich Asians,' 'Parasite,' 'Minari,' 'Squid Game,' and 'Everything Everywhere All At Once,' it ploughs its own furrow in much the same way as those films and TV shows did.

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And like those films and TV shows, it is radically different in story, style and tone to the other Asian led dramas.

Audiences will be especially struck by its similarity at times to Joel Schumacher's 1993 examination of American rage culture in the darkly comic thriller 'Falling Down' with Michael Douglas.

But the vicious battle of the sexes at the heart of the show is also reminiscent of another Douglas movie, the superb Danny de Vito directed 1989 black comedy 'The War of the Roses' with Kathleen Turner.

At the core, though, of Jin's drama is a story of disillusioned people on either ends of the social spectrum lashing out as they struggle to find fulfilment in their life through work, family, possessions and faith.

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Amy's marriage to George is inert and she feels the pressure of having to close a major business deal as the family's major breadwinner.

As she struggles to clinch the deal, her husband raises Junie while producing unimpressive blob like sculptures that have very little appeal to art buyers.

Amy struggles to connect with her smart young daughter and a mother in law, Patti Yasutake's Fumi who she suspects doesn't really like her.

Add to that the pressure of just keeping up with the high end Californian lifestyle of plush modernist homes, magazine profiles and art collections and you can see why she might crack.

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In the other end of the social spectrum, Danny is trying to recover from the loss of his family's business and harbouring a guilty secret about his brother.

He's suffered romantic disappointment and at his lowest ebb dabbles with a Korean Evangelical Church while struggling to get his contractor business going.

While he finds Isaac fun, he knows that Paul is right and that his cousin could land him in trouble.

When Danny and Amy's lives intersect, it's a toxic mix with both of them channeling their disappointment and rage into an increasingly nasty and bizarre feud.

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Jin and his fellow writers Alice Ju, Carrie Kemper, Alex Russell, Marie Hanhnhon Nguyen, Niko Gutierrez-Kovner, Joanna Calo, Kevin Rosen and Jean Kyoung Frazier do a great job chronicling the feud, delivering smart, witty 34 minute episode scripts with titles that refer to Sylvia Plath poems and the writing of US feminist Betty Friedan.

It's also terrifically directed by the Japanese filmmaker Hikari, Jake Schreier of 'Robot and Frank' fame and Lee Sung Jin who all know when to turn its dials up at the right moments.

The penultimate episode by Schreier is undoubtedly the series' high point.

It is so impressively constructed and controlled, it eclipses all other episodes but all three directors manage to get the pacing, look and tone right in a twisty drama that somehow avoids going too over the top.

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Wong and Yeun are just wonderful in the anchor roles of Amy and Danny.

Both somehow manage to engage our sympathies even when their characters embark on monstrous behaviour that will ultimately lead to self-destruction.

They are thrillingly supported by Lee, Mazino, Yasutake, Choe, Holt, Bello, Ashley Park as Amy's neighbour Naomi, Justin H Min as the Evangelical Church leader Edwin, Alyssa Gihee Kim as his wife and Danny's ex, Veronica and Rek Lee and Andrew Santino as Isaac's feckless buddies, Bobby and Michael.

Of these, Bello, Park, Choe and Yasutake particularly stand out.

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Is it fair, though, to compare or contrast Jin's show with 'Succession'?

Of course not.

'Beef' is a considerable way off reaching that show's level of brilliance.

However it is a smartly written, refreshingly acted and directed modern day parable with a distinct Asian flavour.

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It's fun to watch and occasionally jaw dropping.

'Beef' also has real potential if Jin really wants to explore its characters' desperate search for fulfilment further.

More importantly for a Netflix show, it will have you mulling over its themes for days.

It may even provoke passionate debate and that's always a sign of a good show.

(Season One of 'Beef' was made available for streaming on Netflix on April 6, 2023)