Dramas like
Chicken Nugget

Comedy staged with total commitment and no wink. Same principle as Chicken Nugget: pick an absurd premise, then act it as though it were a crime drama, and let the tone whiplash do the work. Kim Nam Gil at full volume. Difference: the plot is a real conspiracy with real stakes, so it grounds itself in a way Chicken Nugget refuses to.

Hooks early Episode 2, once the priest, the prosecutor and the detective are stuck in the same room.

Nonsense with rules. Both build a silly universe and then respect its physics completely, which is where the laughs actually come from, and both are willing to spend a whole scene on a bit. Comfort 5, and it earns it. Difference: it is an adventure comedy with a warm heart and a plot that goes somewhere. Chicken Nugget would rather escalate.

Slow start Episode 3. The first two hours are loud and shapeless and the powers are played as a gag; from three onward the trio becomes a unit and the 1999 doomsday setting starts doing real work.

Tonal whiplash treated as a feature. A show that will put slapstick next to arson and expect you to keep up, which is exactly the Chicken Nugget contract. The building full of eccentrics is the same comic engine as the nugget household. Difference: twenty episodes, a revenge plot with genuine cruelty in it, and a romance.

Slow start Episode 3, when the Geumga Plaza tenants stop being obstacles and become his crew.

A supernatural premise played for laughs and then quietly for feeling. Same trick of a ridiculous setup used as a delivery mechanism for other people's misery, with a bad-tempered lead and an intern who did not ask for any of this. Difference: it resolves emotionally every episode, where Chicken Nugget is committed to being weird all the way down.

Hooks early Episode 1. The bar, the debt and the rules are all on the table immediately.

A cast of oddballs and a show that trusts them. Broad, silly, physically committed comedy with an ensemble doing bits, which is the register Chicken Nugget lives in for its full run. Difference: it is an action comedy with a team and a mission, so there is a spine holding it together.

Hooks early Episode 1. Retired Olympians are recruited into a police unit and the tone is set immediately. The structure after that is a loop rather than a build.

Absurd workplace premise, real workplace anger. A comedy about labour rights conducted through ghosts, which is the same manoeuvre as a nugget standing in for a missing daughter. Silly on the surface, pointed underneath. Difference: it is a case-of-the-week comedy with a moral, and the tone stays much safer.

Hooks early Episode 1. A labour consultant starts seeing the workers who died on the job, and the case of the week format is running by the end of the hour.