Dramas like
Our Blues

Same writer, and the closest thing she has made to this. An ensemble of older people whose lives are already mostly decided, given the screen time and the interiority a genre this age-obsessed normally refuses them. Difference: no romance holding the chapters together and no island, and it is far blunter about dying, so the softness here is traded for something closer to a reckoning.

Slow start Episode 3, once the friend group's shared history stops being backstory.

The other great Jeju drama, and the one to watch if the island was the draw. Same weather, same sea, same interest in ordinary people being quietly heroic about money and family. Difference: it is one couple followed across decades rather than an anthology, so it builds instead of resetting, and it will take more out of you.

Hooks early Episode 2, where the childhood section pays off.

Same writer, same director, same belief that working people are worth twenty hours. Noh Hee Kyung and Kim Kyu Tae on an ensemble of colleagues where nobody is exceptional and everybody is tired. Difference: the police station gives it a procedural spine and a case every week, so it has somewhere to put its plot, where Our Blues just has the island.

Slow start Episode 3, after the training arc ends.

The same pair, aimed at one couple instead of a community. Noh Hee Kyung writing damage without pity, and Kim Kyu Tae shooting it in warm light that makes the hard parts land softer. Difference: it is a romance with a mental-illness plot at its centre, so the structure is a single arc and the illness is the plot.

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

Small lives, long silences, and no interest in being exciting. Same conviction that people who never leave their hometown are worth a whole series, with the same suspicion of anything that looks like a plot. Difference: pace 1 and much colder, a family that mostly does not speak, and no ensemble warmth to fall back on.

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

The seaside village version with the sadness turned down. A community that absorbs an outsider, neighbours used as cushioning, and grief that is real without being allowed to take the show over. Difference: it is a romcom with comfort 5, so the grief that gives Our Blues its weight is replaced by comfort you can see from episode one.

Hooks early Episode 2, once the village cast is established.