I don't watch a lot of law-themed Korean dramas, so maybe it's not so surprising that this series reminds me of one of the few I actually did see--I Hear Your Voice. Suspicious Partner feels like a gender-swapped take on the same story. In this show, we're introduced to cranky Ji Wook, who's just been voted the worst prosecutor in all of Seoul. He doesn't pay attention to the human rights of his adversaries, so he steamrolls through every case with no decency. Which is a little like I Hear Your Voice's Hye Seung, a defeated defense lawyer who puts zero effort into her work. Their MOs are different, but the end result is the same--these characters are terrible at their jobs because they don't care about the people they work for. Both stories kick off with acts that are out of character. Hye Seung stands up in court to convict a murderer even at great personal risk, and Ji Wook allows his morals to sabotage a case he's practically won. Alas, Suspicious Partner's female lead isn't really a female version of I Hear Your Voice's mind-reading Soo Ha. Not only does Bong Hee not have superpowers, she doesn't even have the regular old abilities most of us take for granted. She's blind as a bat, and without her sight she has a hard time understanding the people around her. (They play this up as trouble hearing in the show, but it makes perfect sense that without visual cues, it's just hard to know what people really mean when they're talking.) I guess this makes her the opposite of Soo Ha--she knows less than average, while he knows more. And yet, this drama's characters might end up on a path similar to the one in I Hear Your Voice. Ji Wook has just torpedoed his career to save Bong Hee, and it might mean he becomes a complete outsider to the professional world Bong Hee still inhabits, just as Soo Ha was an outsider in Hye Seung's world in Voice.