Dramas like
If You Wish Upon Me

The unfinished business of the dead, and a guardian nobody expected to be good at it. Same structure of a team entering the worst room in somebody's life and treating it with proper attention, same central bond between a damaged man and a young person he did not ask for. Difference: ten episodes, no romance, heavy 5, and it is colder in the best possible way.

Hooks early Episode 1 already tells you exactly what the show is.

Damaged people, care work, and love as an act of maintenance. Same subject of somebody unloved from childhood learning to be around others, and the same hospital-adjacent setting that gives the show a rotating cast of patients. Difference: it is stylised and romance-led, and the fairy-tale framing does a lot of the emotional lifting.

Slow start Episode 3, when the brothers' history starts opening up.

A ward, a patient per episode, and kindness with procedure attached. Same insistence that the people in the beds are the point and the staff are colleagues rather than saints. Difference: no wish, no found family, no supernatural sweetness, and the pastel packaging hides something considerably heavier.

Hooks early Episode 1, which sets the format: one patient, one nurse, one small mercy, repeated for twelve hours.

Dignity at the end of a life, treated as an achievable thing. Same central pairing of an older person with limited time and a young man with no direction, and the same refusal to make either of them a lesson. Difference: it is ballet rather than last wishes, and the frailty in it is a body and a memory giving out rather than a ward. Twelve gentler episodes that still do not spare you.

Hooks early Episode 2, the first proper lesson. It is a two-hander from there.

Found family assembled out of broken homes. Same belief that the people who choose you outrank the ones who did not, and the same warmth toward adults doing a bad job kindly. Difference: the childhood half is the good half and the adult half turns into a love triangle, so it does not finish what it starts.

Hooks early Episode 1. The three kids and the makeshift household are established beautifully in the first two hours.

Sung Dong Il again, and mental illness written with warmth rather than pity. Same house of people looking after each other badly and then better, same mix of jokes and real damage. Difference: it is a romance first, glossier, and eight years older.

Slow start Episode 3, once the housemates are all under one roof and the household becomes the setting.