Beef

Cast and characters

Season 1

Steven Yeun as Danny Cho, a struggling contractor of Korean heritage who is involved in a road rage incident

Ali Wong as Amy Lau, a small business owner of Chinese and Vietnamese heritage and the other party in the road rage incident

Miya Cech portrays a young Amy

Joseph Lee as George Nakai, a sculptor of Japanese heritage and Amy's stay-at-home husband

Young Mazino as Paul Cho, Danny's languishing younger brother

David Choe as Isaac Cho, Danny and Paul's criminal cousin, recently released from prison

Patti Yasutake as Fumi Nakai, George's mother

Maria Bello as Jordan, the wealthy owner of a home improvement chain store

Ashley Park as Naomi, Jordan's sister-in-law and Amy's neighbor

Mia Serafino as Mia, Amy's assistant

Remy Holt as June, Amy and George's young daughter

Justin H. Min as Edwin, a praise leader in a Korean church and husband of Danny's ex-girlfriend

Alyssa Gihee Kim as Veronica, Danny's ex-girlfriend and Edwin's wife

Andie Ju as Esther, a friend of Edwin and Veronica

Andrew Santino as Michael, an associate of Isaac

Season 2

Oscar Isaac as Joshua Martín, the general manager of the Monte Vista Point Country Club in California, Lindsay's husband, and Ashley's boss

Carey Mulligan as Lindsay Crane-Martín, Josh's interior designer wife

Cailee Spaeny as Ashley Miller, an employee at the Monte Vista Point Country Club and Austin's fiancée

Charles Melton as Austin Davis, an aspiring personal trainer and Ashley's fiancé

Youn Yuh-jung as Chairwoman Park, the billionaire new owner of the Monte Vista Point Country Club

Seoyeon Jang as Eunice, Chairwoman Park's personal assistant and interpreter

William Fichtner as Troy, a Baby boomer and an affluent member of the Monte Vista Point Country Club who gets VIP services from Josh

Matthew Kim (BM) as Woosh, a Gen Z professional tennis player and coach at the Monte Vista Point Country Club, the son of Chairwoman Park's first husband

Mikaela Hoover as Ava, Troy's much younger wife

Song Kang-ho as Dr. Kim, Chairwoman Park's second husband and a prominent plastic surgeon in Seoul

Michole Briana White as Janet

Greg Benson as Steve

Jason Her as Chief Counsel to Chairwoman Park, who devises strategies to cover up the death at Trochos as a "fixer"

Fernanda Andrade as Sara

Episodes

Production

The project, created by Korean-American director Lee Sung Jin and starring Steven Yeun and Ali Wong, was first announced in March 2021. There was a bidding war over the series rights. Netflix won the rights. In December, Lee Isaac Chung was reported to be directing the pilot episode. In March 2022, additional castings were announced, including David Choe and Patti Yasutake, and the pilot episode would instead be directed by Japanese director Hikari. She was also confirmed to direct several additional episodes. Filming began by April 2022.

In April 2023, Lee said he planned for the series to last three seasons, saying: "There are a lot of ideas on my end to keep this story going. I think should we be blessed with a season two, there's a lot of ways for Danny and Amy to continue. I have one really big general idea that I can't really say yet, but I have three seasons mapped out in my head currently."

In February 2024, it was announced that a second season was being actively explored, with Charles Melton, Cailee Spaeny, Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway. In June 2024, it was reported that Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan were in negotiations to star in the second season. In August 2024, Melton and Spaeny confirmed they were in negotiations to star in the second season. In October 2024, it was confirmed that Isaac, Mulligan, Melton, and Spaeny had been cast as the leads, with the story centering around "a young couple witnessing an alarming fight between their boss and his wife, triggering chess moves of favors and coercion in the elitist world of a country club and its Korean billionaire owner".

This marked the third collaboration for Isaac and Mulligan, after having co-starred in the films Drive (2011) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013).

Music

The first-season score is by Bobby Krlic. The second-season composer is Finneas O'Connell.

Release

Beef premiered at South by Southwest on March 18, 2023. All 10 episodes were released on Netflix on April 6, 2023. The second season premiered on April 16, 2026.

Reception

Critical response

The first season of Beef received universal critical acclaim. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 98% of 125 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The website's consensus reads: "Ali Wong and Steven Yeun are a diabolically watchable pair of adversaries in Beef, a prime cut comedy that finds the pathos in pettiness. " Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 86 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave Beef 3.5 out of 4 stars. In his review, he noted that the general mood of the country, characterized by anxiety, frustration, and anger, was effectively used to create a "tonally daring" show that vacillates between comedy, drama, and thriller. Tallerico praised the show's well-structured plotting and lauded Yeun's and Wong's performances, calling them the best he had seen that year and applauding their ability to make their characters relatable and grounded. Tallerico also found the show's penultimate episode "a little hard-to-swallow" and felt it took some significant decisions away from the characters, which detracted from the narrative.

In her review for Variety, Alison Herman praised the chemistry between Wong and Yeun, as well as their performances. She wrote that the show starts grounded in emotional concerns but spirals ever further out into surrealism and caricatures, sometimes distracting from its "core insights". In her review for NPR, Linda Holmes wrote that the show is interested in big questions about meaning and purpose in life and "tackles them with inventiveness and deep empathy". She praised the show's stunning, surprising, and empathetic portrayal of the muddled humanity of its very messy characters and its ability to blend humor with deep existential questions. Holmes also praised the performances, especially Yeun's, and the production design.

Ben Travers of IndieWire gave the series a grade of B and wrote that it does a fine job balancing the protagonists' practical intelligence and impractical passions. He added that the series is designed to evoke empathy for each combatant while exploring their shared humanity and collective hardships, and it delves into their demons while drawing parallels between the two leads. He wrote that some of the plot twists feel forced, but Wong and Yeun "shine throughout". Ellen E. Jones of The Guardian gave the show 4 out of 5 stars and called it a "dark, existential thriller" and a "delicacy worth savouring". She wrote that the show's "extremely funny" dialogue and chaos highlights the quality of its leads.

Viewership

The second season debuted at the number 10 spot on the Netflix Top 10 the week it was released, pulling in 2.4 million views, a drop of about 58% from the opening of season one.