The Auditors (2024) A Recommendation
It must be that I am guilty of watching so much brainless key-jangling fluff that The Auditors feels like mature thoughtful telly with surprising attention to detail. But judging from the online comments (the little there is) I’m not only one who thinks that this might be one of year’s best K dramas. It isn’t just the well-chosen cast but the production values are pretty polished. It is quite slick and the comparisons with Suits is not without merit. Shin Ha-kyun is stellar if stoic but never forgets his calling. Jin Goo whose initial status as office foe undergoes something of an overhaul looks like he’s had the time of his life being cantankerous and rough around the edges. The always underrated Jung Moon-sung has carved up a tv career as a character actor playing all sorts and excels in every role. His CEO is enigmatic, cold and yet seemingly affable as the man with the top job. Lee Jung-ha is suitably wide-eyed as the office whippersnapper. On the online forums, his character gets a bit of a trashing because his unbridled zeal is his Achilles’ heel but apart from the early stumbling around, no harm’s done. The lad’s just in need of a good kick in the rear end. To his credit, he’s willing to listen and learn.
Apart from being a straightforward procedural there are a number of threads running through this. Yes, yes the show reminds us at the end (lest we slept through the entire series) that auditors are necessary. It’s more or less an indisputable fact. Watch dogs are necessary, Shin Cha-il says, as people just can’t be trusted. He’s not wrong. The show proves it unequivocally. If unethical people can bend the rules, find loopholes and cut corners, they surely will. At the heart of this is human nature with all its disordered loves. And even if there’s some degree of goodwill at the start, bad decisions can be made on the spur of the moment or under duress.
Auditors are somewhat similar to law enforcement in that regard. That certainly rings out with reverberating clarity all throughout the drama. They ensure that everyone in the organization is compliant with policies and regulations. They ensure that the accountability structures are meaningful and not just public relations theatre. Shin Cha-il learned early on in his career that people die when auditors don’t do they jobs properly — a thesis that’s proven all throughout. Prevention… I was told in Health Education classes eons ago… is always better than cure. That is when auditors do God’s work and eschew the devil’s temptations to look the other way.
Shin Cha-il is the Auditor. The ideal investigator. He’s curious. He spots anomalies. He checks. He double checks. He asks questions. And he is rigorous about covering all the bases. It isn’t just a job, it’s a disposition. When his backstory comes to light, it makes sense. As the lead auditor, he has to lead and delegate while he instructs those under his charge on the finer points of following lines of inquiry.
He’s been told more than once that he goes too far. Whatever that means. Opposition who wag their fingers at him are usually comfortable with the status quo. It suits them that things remain as they are since they are beneficiaries of a corrupt system. Even when it hemorrhages the organization they work for and causes harm to the people around them they’ve managed to rationalize their criminal activities. At some point Cha-il is the subject of a witch hunt. He’s accused of causing suicides. As usual appearances are deceptive. There’s more than meets the eye. Each case makes his point better than he ever has to — people cannot be trusted. Still there is a place for trust — proven through rigorous scrutiny and not blindly given.
More than all of that, Shin Cha-il is the ideal judge. Patterned after the likes of Justice Bao or Judge Di Renjie, he represents a collective longing for a just judge in an unjust world. Someone who can discern the truth after peeling the layers of deception, unafraid to challenge authority figures and make the right judgements punishing evil doers and exonerating the wrongly maligned.
While JU Constructions gets the Augean stable treatment flushing the filth, the biggest beneficiary of Shin Cha-il’s auditorship is the office eager beaver, Han-soo. He gets the education of a lifetime under the team leader’s tutelage. Before Cha-il’s arrival, he’s raring to be posted to Florida and learns the brutal way that he is far from ready to conquer the world. His worldview and hubris is challenged. The world’s most famous detective once said to his trusty companion in crime Dr Watson "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."Over and over again, his mentor reminds him about the importance of finding evidence. Truth is no respecter of persons so getting to the bottom of things requires a single-minded approach that goes beyond the level feelings to objective data.
The K drama lover could do a lot worse than The Auditor. It’s probably one of those shows that could have easily added a few more episodes with doing damage to the brand. But as I always say, it is better to finish on a high leaving the audience wanting more than making the audience feel that they just did a stack of unnecessary homework that added nothing to the value of the story.