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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
56
Mixed:
11
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Apr 7, 2023
Apr 6, 2023
Season 1 Review:
“Beef,” which plays like “Falling Down” meets “Changing Lanes” with a little bit of “White Lotus” for good measure, but stands on its own as a bold, darkly funny, emotionally bruising, provocative and wicked-smart social satire — the best series I’ve seen this year.
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Apr 6, 2023
Season 1 Review:
"Beef" is magnificent and maniacal, an utterly unique story that spins the everyday into the epic. Anchored by outstanding performances by Steven Yeun and Ali Wong as the feuding drivers who gleefully trash their own lives in pursuit of revenge, "Beef" is depraved without being heartless.
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Mar 20, 2023
Season 1 Review:
The half-hours fly by as wild twists twists pile up. What’s less expected, however — and what really lingers once the dust has settled — is the series’ emphasis on the characters’ flawed humanity, and its disarming sense of empathy for their existential despair. ... A pair of spectacular performances. ... Each joke grows from characters performed and written so vividly, they seem to leap off the screen.
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Mar 20, 2023
Season 1 Review:
A smart, sophisticated comedy with an ideal cast, artful direction, polished production design. ... The rare show that, like Everything, honors the differences in class, ethnicity, and personality that make each of its mostly Asian-American characters unique, rather than flattening them into some idealized exercise in “positive representation.” It’s a remarkably confident debut from Dave and Undone vet Lee, and one that keeps upping its ante until the bitter, big-hearted end.
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IndieWireApr 16, 2026
Season 2 Review:
The most beautiful moments of Lee’s epic tale appear at times when all the noise has been stripped away, and each character has to face a truth they’ve been fighting so hard to ignore. When they face them together, when they share their experience instead of putting up walls, it’s all the more powerful. .... Alas, their beef is too big to squash. But this “Beef” is better for it.
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The PlaylistMar 20, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Much like the characters themselves, it is a series that is wrapped in an angry outer shell that reveals itself to have a compassionate inside that can either break free or be obliterated. Even as you never know which will end up coming to pass, you’re locked in for the ride.
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Apr 16, 2026
Season 2 Review:
Season 2 lands viewers “The White Lotus”-style into a new locale and with a new cast (Wong and Yeun remain as executive producers), and refines the concept of payback into something that, at least initially, feels more restrained than its predecessor. Quickly, though, the story spirals into a series of events that prove to be just as deliciously wicked and twisty as its predecessor.
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Jun 1, 2023
Season 1 Review:
With Beef, creator Lee Sung Jin and his stellar cast have crafted an almost operatic tale about the cost of unaddressed rage, narcissism, and trauma. It’s funny, it’s harrowing, and it’s exceptionally original in portraying two damaged people who find their mirror selves in a random parking lot dust-up.
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Apr 7, 2023
Season 1 Review:
While the ethnic variety of "Beef" may be potent, the more critical element in its cascading series of errors, embarrassments and calamities is precisely the shared feeling of cosmic displacement—and unfairness—that bonds our two heroes, such as they are; their very particular personalities give the series its energy.
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Apr 6, 2023
Season 1 Review:
“Beef” is a comedy, but it’s just as powerfully a drama about two lost and lonely people chasing each other, and chasing each other away. The acting is strong throughout. Wong makes Amy’s raw fury hit home, both comically and dramatically, but she’s always sympathetic. Likewise, Yeun elevates Danny’s wrath into something complex.
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Apr 16, 2026
Season 2 Review:
While it initially feels like an entirely different series is playing out, all of the strands eventually come together in a manner that not only cleverly ties back to the show’s themes about love, but sends the whole thing off with a surprisingly action-packed showstopper of a finale.
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Apr 14, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Amy’s attempts to find catharsis lead her to make decisions that range from farcical to frightening, if not outright criminal. In her, Lee conveys the thrill and desperation of that never-ending search for release—a journey that pushes Beef forward, step by fascinating step. Wong sells each of them. She’s never been funnier, or more heartbreaking.
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RogerEbert.comApr 6, 2023
Mar 31, 2023
Season 1 Review:
There are times when Beef’s mix of deliciously dark comedy and gentle-hearted empathy doesn’t quite coalesce. ... But that doesn’t make the show’s complicated, compassionate depiction of mental health or riotous portrayal of just how liberating it can be to indulge our pettiest impulses any less satisfying to sink your teeth into.
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Apr 16, 2026ColliderMar 20, 2023
Season 1 Review:
All the independent story threads are eventually tied together, and some of the final episodes of BEEF are among the best dramatic television ever brought us. Still, it might take some time for the series to finally click, a side effect of its unique perspective and unexpected tone. However, once BEEF finds its footing, it becomes a delicious drama with shocking turns, capable of dealing with complex themes with both levity and grace.
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Radio TimesApr 16, 2026
Season 2 Review:
Beef season 2 was always going to lack the element of surprise that this series benefitted from when it burst onto our screens, but it would have been nice to see some bigger swings taken this time around. That said, Lee Sung Jin has proven without doubt that Beef works as an anthology and, with any luck, there will be more sizzling, bloody servings to come.
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The GuardianApr 6, 2023
Season 1 Review:
It’s a dark, existential thriller about cynical people confronting a deep sadness within. And this – despite several very funny lines of dialogue – doesn’t easily translate to light entertainment. Yet this Beef, when marinated in creator Lee Sung Jin’s unique perspective and tenderised by unexpected plot twists, soon becomes a delicacy worth savouring.
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The Daily BeastApr 5, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Anyone who’s ever wanted to rage against a fellow motorist will feel piercingly seen by this 10-part Netflix affair (produced by A24), and if it eventually goes somewhat off the rails toward its conclusion—albeit in a manner meant to echo its characters—it remains a surprising and amusing investigation of behind-the-wheel fury and the underlying forces that fuel it.
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Apr 5, 2023
Season 1 Review:
For the most part, Lee and his writers succeed. Though some of the show’s more elaborate jokes are strained, Beef otherwise has a taut, offbeat humor that distinguishes it from plenty of banally crude we-can-say-swears comedies that have clogged up premium cable and streaming services in the last ten years.
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Apr 3, 2023
Apr 5, 2023
Season 1 Review:
The series is interested in serving up the fights viewers want to see, but it also peels back layers of the characters to ultimately reveal how similar Danny and Amy are. Whether it’s healthy for easily-triggered viewers to tune in to watch others get triggered, well, each viewer will have to decide on their own.
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IndieWireMar 20, 2023
Season 1 Review:
“Beef” remains eminently watchable (so long as your nerves can tolerate such needlessly risky behavior) and its riveting performances make the five-plus hours a worthy investment. The limited series may jump the shark in its back half, but in doing so, it also mimics the contradictory emotions tied to its core conflict.
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Mar 20, 2023
Apr 16, 2026
Season 2 Review:
The actors keep it real enough, as their characters, forced to grow a little, are dragged into the same space for the climax, as the series revs up into a kind of conspiracy thriller, before a coda set eight years later finds them variously arranged. As in the less conclusive first season, it feels engineered to deliver the characters to happy, or relatively happy, endings, and to send viewers out not regretting their investment of time.
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Screen RantApr 16, 2026
Season 2 Review:
When the show is reaching for the heights of its first season, there's a tension there, the series unfurling into something a little messier. As a conspiracy grows and envelops all of our main characters, Beef season 2 can feel unwieldy, but Lee and his co-directors Jake Schreier and Kitao Sakurai maintain a sleek visual style that evolves as the series progresses.
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Apr 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
The bulk of the series consists of two people acting foolishly, every step forward followed by a giant leap back, again and again and again. And again. Yet if you hang on, some light finally does break in. (Even then, the show will toy with you.) And at long last, you might call it a comedy.
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Apr 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
The series’ portraiture is most compelling when the alienation experienced by the characters achieves a larger sociological resonance. ... The layers of repressed despair shaken loose by Amy and Danny’s feud are so precisely crafted that “Beef” can’t help but disappoint when, toward the season’s end, the stakes are raised to the melodrama of cinematic violence. ... In a series with such a clear-eyed view of human darkness, the eleventh-hour fuzzies aren’t given enough time for the warmth to sink in.
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Apr 4, 2023
Season 1 Review:
[Ali Wong and Steven Yeun] forge a chemistry that anchors “Beef” through its stop-and-start pacing and wild tonal swings. ... When “Beef” keeps its focus on these characters and the worlds they inhabit — like the Orange County Korean church where Danny starts to volunteer, or the high-powered conference where Amy sermonizes about “having it all” — the more it does right by the performers at its heart.
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What's Alan Watching?Apr 16, 2026
Season 2 Review:
In increasing the number of central characters from two to four — five, arguably — in jumping back and forth between America and South Korea, and in trying to say more thematically about income inequality and various forms of economic anxiety, Beef creator Lee Sung Jin's reach has exceeded his grasp this time around. There's still some good material here, and one fantastic episode that's the equal of anything in the first season. It's just not as focused, nor as potent, as it was when Yeun and Wong were going at it.
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The TimesApr 16, 2026
Season 2 Review:
By the final couple of episodes, when the action pinballs to South Korea, things have veered from unpredictable to near-deranged.But let’s not quibble too much. When it’s being funny (such as Austin’s blagging as he fakes it as a physical therapist), being perceptive about neediness and dissatisfaction within a long-term relationship, or being simply downright entertaining in the country club, this beef can still be something rare and delicious.
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Apr 16, 2026
Season 2 Review:
Aside from Lindsay and Josh’s early blowout fight, the tensions in this season of “Beef” never quite boil over again. Ultimately, keeping all the competing characters’ diabolical deeds at a low-level simmer means that this installment as a whole feels undercooked and unsatisfying.
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Apr 16, 2026
Season 2 Review:
The new bosses’ high-class problems are always tertiary to the Josh-Lindsay-Ashley-Austin quadfecta and never stop feeling tacked-on, even when plot contrivances transport the entire ensemble to Seoul for the finale. But they’re just present enough to distract from the core conflict, transforming the season from a group character study into a corporate espionage thriller such that neither half feels fully fleshed-out. It’s a shame, because before they peter out, there are threads worth following.
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Apr 5, 2023
Season 1 Review:
What makes “Beef” compellingly watchable is the crackling chemistry between Wong and Yeun. ... For the most part, the heavy absurdity in “Beef” works, but there are a few off notes. ... Its use of this weapon feels painful when considering the deadly toll of gun violence in the United States, especially after the Monterey Park killings shattered Asian American communities so recently. I also took issue with the series’ casting of millionaire graffiti artist David Choe as Isaac, Danny’s volatile, villainous cousin.
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