SBS’s Friday-Saturday series "Phantom Lawyer" (written by Kim Ga-young and Kang Cheol-gyu, directed by Shin Joong-hoon) is on a tear. Episode 4, which aired on the 21st, scored a metropolitan-area average of 9.3%, a new series high. That’s nearly double the 5.6% from the premiere. The minute-by-minute peak jumped back up to 11.3%, proving it has the pull to park viewers in front of their TVs.
In the key 20-49 demo, the show hit a best of 3.34%, ranking No. 1 across all Saturday broadcasts. It also took No. 1 in Netflix’s Today’s Top 10 in South Korea (Series) as of March 24. And according to Good Data Corporation’s FUNdex for the third week of March (released March 24), both the drama and its cast placed near the top in buzz rankings―solidifying the show’s hot streak.
At the center of the breakout is Yoo Yeon-seok’s shape-shifting, laugh-to-gasp performance. When Shin I-rang gets possessed, he can flip from a rough-and-ready gangster aura to a would-be idol trainee nailing IVE’s "LOVE DIVE" choreography. Yoo’s one-man show is serving up weekly “legendary clips” that fans can’t stop sharing.
The chemistry of the “I-rangz” trio―Shin I-rang, his brother-in-law Yoon Bong-su (Jeon Seok-ho), and Father Matteo (Jung Seung-gil)―keeps the energy high. Once-skeptical Bong-su now bows politely to thin air out of fear and manners toward spirits. Father Matteo, a priest with a past in shamanism, pops up to explain that spirits get excited by favorite foods or songs and lash out at what they hate―cue the laughs. The trio’s antics are the perfect pressure valve for a weighty legal drama.
But it’s not just jokes. A tightly woven mystery drives the binge factor. Beyond untangling the wrongful deaths behind each case, the show is stacking a major arc around why I-rang can see ghosts and how it ties to his father’s death―fueling viewers’ inner detectives. In the latest episode, I-rang’s mother Park Kyung-hwa (Kim Mi-kyung) revealed that the shaman’s house she once visited to clear her husband’s unjust death now stands where her son’s office is―leaving her wracked with guilt. Father Matteo has begun tracking a missing censer and a shaman, which triggered I-rang’s ability to see spirits. Those clues set up the mystery to escalate even further.
That momentum lands in I-rang’s “awakening.” In the Episode 4 ending, he quietly tells a newly arrived male ghost (Yoon Na-moo), who was killed in a mysterious attack, “I’m your lawyer, Shin I-rang.” The line sends chills―and signals his resolve to right any spirit’s wrongs. Now fully embracing his fate as a “ghost-specialist attorney,” all eyes are on how he’ll dig into the truth behind his father’s case.
"Phantom Lawyer" airs Fridays and Saturdays at 9:50 p.m. on SBS.
(SBS Entertainment News | Kang Sun-ae)
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