Dramas like
A Korean Odyssey

The Hong sisters premise with the pacing fixed, and the show to switch to if this one is losing you. Same writers, same bargain between a powerful non-human and a woman tied to him by a contract neither can break, same world-building played for laughs and then for keeps. Difference: it moves faster, the romance is direct rather than perverse, and it does not spend four episodes recovering from its own production, so the endurance test at the front of Korean Odyssey is simply absent.

Slow start Episode 3, once the training arc starts and the ensemble locks in.

Same writers, same bargain, and it is the version that works. The Hong sisters again on an immortal tied to a mortal by an obligation neither of them chose, with the same gorgeous cruelty and the same habit of ending an episode on a joke and a knife. Difference: the emotional architecture holds all the way through, where this one runs out of room.

Slow start Episode 3, once the hotel staff get histories of their own.

Their most recent, and the wit is intact. Hong Jung Eun and Hong Mi Ran again, with magical realism sitting quietly underneath a comedy about work. Difference: it is small, contemporary and gentle, with no mythology to service, so the epic scale that A Korean Odyssey aims for and misses is not attempted.

Hooks early Episode 1. The meet cute in Kamakura is the whole pitch and it is the best hour in the run, so if it does not land nothing later will.

Same director, and the same tonal problem handled better. Kim Byung Soo again on a supernatural ability used for crime and romance in the same hour, with identical meters on pace, romance, weight and comfort. Difference: the power has clear rules and a human cost, so it never has to reach for spectacle it cannot afford.

Hooks early Episode 1. The fire and the ability are established at once.

An immortal and the mortal who is written into his story. Same 2016 to 2017 fantasy wave, same structure of a being who has waited a very long time meeting somebody who can end the waiting, same comic sidekicks. Difference: it is far more disciplined and its emotional logic is watertight, so the mess that makes A Korean Odyssey frustrating is nowhere in it.

Slow start Episode 8. Everything before it is mood, rules and comedy, and the buildup asks for real patience. From episode 8 the show stops explaining itself and starts spending.

Powers as an inconvenience, and a family arguing about them. Same trick of putting the supernatural in a domestic frame and mining it for comedy before it turns sad. Difference: it is quiet and contained with no mythology at all, so the demon-king scale is replaced by depression and a house.

Slow start Episode 7. The con at the centre stops being a con, and both the show and its episode ratings step up and stay up.