Dramas like
Because This Is My First Life

The same exhaustion, with the romance stripped back further. Lee Min Ki again, three siblings commuting from the edge of the city, and a show about a life that is fine and unbearable at once. Both treat the real enemy as the commute, the rent and the sense of being slightly behind. Difference: it is the slowest thing on this site by a distance, the first four episodes are close to nothing, and it offers no contract, almost no plot and no easy consolation: what warmth it has is earned late and in one go.

Slow start Episode 3, once Mr Gu starts drinking with Mi-jeong. Before that it is deliberately airless.

Four adults who talk like adults, and the talking is the show. A sprinter, a translator and two second leads at least as good as the first pair, all solving their problems by saying what they mean. Same absence of a villain, same interest in what a healthy relationship actually sounds like. Difference: no marriage contract and no housing plot, so it has less structure holding it together and drifts more.

Slow start Episode 3, once all four leads stop explaining themselves and start talking.

Adult romance shot like a European film. A pharmacist and a librarian, both of them already tied to other things, moving at the speed of two people who know exactly what leaving costs. Same taste for silence, family pressure and conversation as the entire action. Difference: it is a melodrama about breaking up rather than a comedy about moving in, and there is no wit in it at all.

Slow start Episode 4, once both families are involved. Before that it is glances and pharmacy small talk.

Two people who already know each other, filmed being interviewed about it. Ex-sweethearts dragged in front of a documentary camera, with the interview device doing the same job the contract does here: forcing two guarded people to state a position. Difference: it is about four episodes of story stretched to sixteen, and it is far more interested in beauty than in logistics.

Slow start Episode 3, once the documentary footage starts cutting between who they were and who they are.

Same director, ten years younger. Nam Sung Woo again, on college athletes falling in love with no jealousy engine and no misunderstanding held for four episodes. Same conviction that a couple being direct is more watchable than a couple being kept apart. Difference: it is broad, goofy and about twenty year olds, so the money and marriage anxieties that drive this one do not exist.

Hooks early Episode 2, once the two leads start colliding on purpose.

Same director, the fluffiest thing he has made. Park Joon Hwa on an actress hiding as a secretary in a law firm, built almost entirely from Lee Dong Wook being stiff at Yoo In Na. Same pleasure of two people negotiating a fake arrangement into a real one. Difference: there is no engine under it, and the per-episode ratings fall through the second half because sixteen hours is too long for the joke.

Hooks early Episode 1. The premise is set up and paid off inside the hour.