Dramas like
Something in the Rain

Same writer, same director, same lead. There is nothing closer. Kim Eun and Ahn Pan Seok made this the following year with Jung Hae In again, and it is the same subject handled with more discipline: two adults, a relationship the families object to, and long scenes of nothing but talking. It does not collapse, and the second half stays with the couple, which is the exact repair this show needed. Difference: the discipline costs heat. It is slower, cooler and more interested in a custody arrangement than in wanting somebody, so the specific charge that carries Something in the Rain's first half is much lower here.

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

Son Ye Jin, and the same adult conviction. Same quality of two people whose obstacle is entirely external and entirely real, same interest in a romance that both parties know is expensive. Difference: it is a high-concept comedy-melodrama with an ensemble and a thriller plot, so the domestic realism that defines Something in the Rain is not the register.

Hooks early Episode 2, the moment the village women turn up at his door. The soldiers and the neighbours are the show.

Grown-up romance with an age gap the other way round. Same workplace texture, same interest in what a woman in her late thirties is allowed to want, same restraint. Difference: comfort 5 and no family antagonist, so nothing in it will make you angry.

Hooks early Episode 2, once she is inside the publishing house under false pretences.

Families in the way, deliberately. Shared cast, and the same premise of two people whose mothers have opinions and access. Same slow pace. Difference: the mother here is a comic obstacle rather than a wrecking ball, and the workplace cruelty and harassment plotline have no equivalent, so it never turns on you.

Slow start Episode 3, once the reason she quit her job and came home stops being a punchline.

Women in their late thirties, and the friendship is the spine. Shared cast, and the same honest attention to what that decade actually feels like: careers half-built, parents ageing, romance complicated by time. Difference: heavy 5 and comfort 2, with a terminal-illness plot at the centre, so it is much sadder and the romance is secondary.

Slow start Episode 3, once the diagnosis is out in the open. It stops being a hangout show.

Adult exhaustion as the subject. Same willingness to sit in long silences with people who are tired, same treatment of a family home as a pressure system. Difference: pace 1 and almost no plot, with romance 2, so it is slower and far less interested in the couple than in the three siblings.

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