OneTouch TV

How OneTouch TV works

The site is laid out like an app. A dark bar holds the logo, whose rings spread like the ripple from a fingertip, the search field and a link to My Touch List. Under it is a row of rounded chips: Korean, Chinese and Thai, Japanese, Short series, Top rated and A-Z. One touch on a chip opens that shelf.

The home page begins with a spotlight card, a wide still from one series with a round play button in its centre, and continues with a strip named Hot right now, which ranks the ten most watched series from one to ten. Five rows of poster cards follow, each card showing the score in a corner and the year and episode count beneath the title.

A series page gathers everything needed to decide. The poster, the year and the score come first, then a summary and the cast with the names of their characters. The seasons and episodes are listed with their dates. Beside the Watch now button is a selector with sixteen countries, among them the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea and Japan; choose one, press the button, and JustWatch shows the services that carry the series there. Finding a series explains the search box and the shelves.

The spotlight and Hot right now

The spotlight card currently shows Crash Landing on You, and it is easy to see why it was chosen. A South Korean businesswoman, Yoon Se-ri, is caught by a storm while paragliding and comes down on the northern side of the border, where an army captain, Ri Jeong-hyeok, finds her and decides to help her home. Hyun Bin and Son Ye-jin play the pair across sixteen long episodes, and the village wives, the soldiers of the captain's unit and a soft-hearted eavesdropper supply as much pleasure as the romance.

Hot right now is led by Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, often called Goblin, in which Gong Yoo plays an immortal who has waited nine centuries for the one person able to end his long life, and who shares a house with a grim reaper. True Beauty is second, a school comedy drawn from a web comic. Love Alarm imagines a telephone app that rings when an admirer is near, and Boys Over Flowers, fourth, is the 2009 hit that sent an ordinary girl to a school ruled by four rich boys.

The lower half of the ten holds Stairway to Heaven, Extraordinary Attorney Woo, She Was Pretty, W, Crash Landing on You itself and Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-joo. The order is set by audience size, counted by the number of ratings each series has received.

Korean drama

The Korean shelf holds 148 series and is the heart of the guide. A typical Korean drama is a single season of sixteen episodes, each a little over an hour, written from start to finish by one author. The form suits stories with a beginning, a middle and an end, and it has produced a remarkable run of them.

Some became known across the world. Descendants of the Sun sets a special forces captain and a surgeon in a fictional country far from home. Extraordinary Attorney Woo follows Woo Young-woo, a brilliant young lawyer on the autism spectrum with a passion for whales, through her first cases at a large Seoul firm; Park Eun-bin's performance won praise everywhere. Queen of Tears begins where most romances end, with a married couple, a department store heiress and a village-born lawyer, who must fall in love a second time.

Others are loved for their sense of place. Reply 1988 spends twenty episodes with five families who share one alley in northern Seoul in the year of the Olympics, and many viewers count it the finest of all. Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha sends a city dentist to a fishing village where a local handyman seems to do every job in town. Our Blues tells linked stories of the market traders, divers and sea captains of Jeju Island, and When Life Gives You Tangerines, also set on Jeju, follows a spirited girl and a steadfast boy from the 1950s to the present day. The Korean drama guide offers a way in.

Chinese and Thai drama

The second shelf joins nineteen Chinese-language series with three from Thailand. Chinese drama is generous with its length: forty episodes is common, and the catalogue's longest entry, My Fair Princess, is listed with 192. That series, first shown in 1998, follows a lively orphan who is mistaken for the emperor's daughter and brought to the Qing court, and it made its young cast famous across Asia.

Modern romance is the shelf's largest group. Hidden Love traces a girl's long affection for her brother's friend from her school years to adulthood, with Zhao Lusi in the lead, and The First Frost tells the story of the brother from the same family. Go Ahead is about three children from different households who grow up as siblings under two fathers. Put Your Head on My Shoulder, Love is Sweet, Find Yourself and Only for Love are lighter still. The King's Avatar turns to professional video gaming, and It Started With a Kiss, made in Taiwan in 2005, is a much-loved comedy about a cheerful girl and a brilliant, reserved boy.

The costume dramas are among the grandest on television. Nirvana in Fire is a story of patient strategy at an imperial court, admired for its writing. Journey to the West is the classic adaptation of the Monkey King's pilgrimage, repeated on Chinese television for decades, and Chinese Paladin and Chinese Paladin 3 bring swordsmen and legends to the screen. The Thai series are My School President, about a school music club, Ready, Set, Love and Somewhere Somehow. The Chinese and Thai guide sorts the shelf.

Japanese drama

Twenty Japanese series make up the third shelf. Japanese dramas are short, usually ten or eleven episodes shown across one season of the year, and the best of them are small and exact. Long Vacation of 1996, in which a struggling pianist and a model whose wedding has fallen through share a flat, helped to define the modern love story for viewers across Asia.

Food is a Japanese speciality. In Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories a quiet cook known only as the Master opens his small restaurant from midnight until seven in the morning and makes whatever his customers ask for; each episode is one dish and one life. Samurai Gourmet follows a newly retired man who discovers the pleasure of eating alone at midday, and The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House, made by the film director Hirokazu Kore-eda, is about a girl who becomes the cook for a house of apprentice geisha in Kyoto.

The shelf has comedy and music too. Legal High stars Masato Sakai as an unbeaten and insufferable lawyer. Nodame Cantabile pairs a gifted, untidy pianist with a perfectionist conductor at a music college. The Full-Time Wife Escapist turns a housekeeping job into a contract marriage, and its closing dance was copied all over Japan. First Love, inspired by two songs by Hikaru Utada, follows a couple across twenty years. The Japanese drama guide has more.

Short series

Fifty-three series on OneTouch TV run for twelve episodes or fewer, and they have a shelf and a home page row of their own under the heading Finish in a weekend. The shortest is Splash Splash Love, a two-part fantasy in which a schoolgirl who dreads her mathematics examination steps through a puddle and lands in the court of a Joseon king. The Sound of Magic tells a musical story about a mysterious magician in six episodes, and Ready, Set, Love is as brief.

Twelve episodes has become a popular length for Korean romance. Business Proposal uses it perfectly: an office worker attends a blind date in place of her friend, intending to put the man off, and finds that he is the head of her own company. Navillera is about a retired postman of seventy who decides to learn ballet and the young dancer who reluctantly teaches him. Daily Dose of Sunshine follows a kind-hearted nurse on a hospital ward, and See You in My 19th Life a woman who remembers all her earlier lives.

Most of the Japanese shelf qualifies as short. Quartet gathers four string players in a winter house in the resort town of Karuizawa, each with a secret. First Love has nine episodes and The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House the same. The short series guide lists further choices by length.

Romantic comedy

The romantic comedy shelf is the largest in the guide, with 109 series, and the office is its favourite stage. In What's Wrong with Secretary Kim a vain company executive is astonished when his perfect secretary resigns after nine years, and sets out to change her mind. She Was Pretty reunites two childhood friends at a fashion magazine, where he fails to recognise her. Touch Your Heart sends an actress to work in a law office, and Her Private Life gives a gallery curator a secret life as a devoted fan.

A second group leaves the city behind. Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha is the model, and Once Upon a Small Town, about a young vet from Seoul and a village policewoman, and Welcome to Samdal-ri, in which a photographer returns to her island home, follow gladly in its steps. When the Weather Is Fine sets a quieter romance in a country bookshop in winter.

The older favourites still hold up. My Lovely Sam Soon of 2005 gave Korean television a heroine who was thirty, outspoken and a gifted pastry chef. Coffee Prince followed two years later with a young woman who takes a job at a café that hires only men. Secret Garden has a stuntwoman and a department store owner exchange bodies, and Full House puts a writer and a film star under one roof by contract. The romantic comedy guide arranges the shelf by setting.

Fantasy

Thirty-three series are shelved as fantasy, and Korean writers in particular have made the form their own. The immortals come first. Guardian: The Lonely and Great God has been described. Hotel Del Luna stars IU as the owner of a hotel in Seoul whose guests are all ghosts with unfinished business, and A Korean Odyssey moves the legend of the Monkey King to the present day. My Roommate Is a Gumiho houses a student with a nine-tailed fox who has lived for 999 years.

Time travel has produced some of the best-loved recent series. In Lovely Runner a devoted fan is sent back fifteen years and tries to change the fate of the singer she admires. In Twinkling Watermelon a boy who is the only hearing member of his family finds himself in 1995, playing in a band beside his own teenage father. Familiar Wife returns a tired husband to his student days for a second choice, and the Japanese Jin sends a modern brain surgeon to the last years of the samurai age.

Then there are the other worlds. W opens a door between Seoul and the world inside a comic strip. Extraordinary You is about a schoolgirl who discovers that she is a minor character in someone else's comic and decides to write her own story. The King: Eternal Monarch links a modern kingdom and a republic through a gate in a bamboo forest, and Alchemy of Souls builds a complete land of mages across thirty episodes. The fantasy guide divides the shelf into three.

Historical drama

The historical shelf holds nineteen series. Korea's costume drama, set mostly in the Joseon era, reached the world with Jewel in the Palace in 2003. Across fifty-four episodes it follows Jang-geum from a kitchen maid in the royal household to the first woman to serve as the king's physician, with Lee Young-ae in the part, and its scenes of court cookery started a fashion for Korean food abroad. The Great Queen Seondeok goes further back, to the kingdom of Silla, and runs for sixty-two episodes.

Recent court dramas are shorter and more intimate. The Red Sleeve is the love story of a crown prince and a court lady who values her own freedom. Rookie Historian Goo Hae-Ryung imagines a woman among the palace chroniclers, and The Crowned Clown puts a travelling performer on the throne in place of the king he resembles. Sungkyunkwan Scandal sends a girl in disguise to the royal academy.

Several play with the form. In Mr. Queen the spirit of a modern chef wakes in the body of a Joseon queen, to the confusion of the entire palace. Scarlet Heart: Ryeo carries a present-day woman back to the early Goryeo court and its many princes, and Bon Appétit, Your Majesty sends a French-trained chef to cook for a king. The historical drama guide lists all nineteen.

School and youth

Thirty-one series concern school and the years just after it. Boys Over Flowers set the pattern in 2009: Geum Jan-di, a dry cleaner's daughter, wins a place at an elite school and stands up to its four most privileged pupils. The Heirs and True Beauty are its descendants, and Playful Kiss and the Japanese Mischievous Kiss: Love in Tokyo both retell the same comic about a determined girl and the cleverest boy in the school.

Schools for the arts are a popular setting. Dream High follows six students at a performing arts academy in Seoul and gave early parts to several singers who later became stars, among them Suzy, IU and Kim Soo-hyun. The Japanese Dragon Sakura is about a lawyer who promises to coach the weakest class of a failing school into the country's best university, and GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka puts a former motorcycle gang leader in front of a classroom.

University life has its own favourites. Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-joo is set at a sports college, where a cheerful weightlifter and a swimmer who knew her as a child become friends and then more. Hello, My Twenties! shares a house among five young women with five very different lives, and Cheese in the Trap studies a wary student and an older classmate. The three Reply series, Reply 1997, Reply 1994 and Reply 1988, look back at youth from adulthood and keep the audience guessing which friend the heroine married. The school and youth guide sorts the shelf by age.

Work and medical

Forty-four series are set at work. The medical dramas are the most numerous. Dr. Romantic takes place in a small country hospital where a legendary surgeon, known as Teacher Kim, trains young doctors his own way. Good Doctor is about a gifted young paediatric surgeon with autism, and its story was later remade for American television. Resident Playbook follows first-year residents in obstetrics, and Doctor Slump reunites two former school rivals at the lowest point of their medical careers.

The office drama has a classic in Misaeng: Incomplete Life. Its hero, Jang Geu-rae, trained through his childhood to be a professional player of the board game baduk, and joins a trading company as an intern with a school certificate and little else. The series was praised for showing working life as it is. Search: WWW follows three women at two rival internet companies, Romance Is a Bonus Book is set in a publishing house, and Stove League shows the off-season of a struggling baseball club from the manager's desk.

Law and food complete the shelf. Extraordinary Attorney Woo, Legal High, Beyond the Bar and The Law Cafe cover the courtroom from four angles. The Emperor's Cook tells the true story of a country boy who rose to cook for the Japanese imperial household, and The Potato Lab finds comedy in an agricultural research station. The work and medical guide lists the full shelf.

Classics to 2012

The first of the four period shelves holds thirty-one series from 1986 to 2012. It is where the Korean wave can be seen forming. Autumn in My Heart of 2000, the story of two girls exchanged at birth, was among the first Korean dramas to be watched widely abroad, and Stairway to Heaven followed three years later. Both are melodramas in the full sense, made to be wept over.

By the middle of the decade the tone had lightened. Full House, My Lovely Sam Soon, Princess Hours, which imagines a modern Korea with a royal family, and Coffee Prince all date from 2004 to 2007. Secret Garden, Playful Kiss, Sungkyunkwan Scandal and Dream High carried the form into the new decade, and A Gentleman's Dignity and Reply 1997 close the shelf in 2012.

The oldest titles are Chinese and Japanese. Journey to the West, My Fair Princess and the inn-keeping comedy My Own Swordsman are landmarks of Chinese television. From Japan come Long Vacation, GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka, Producing Nobuta and Nodame Cantabile. The classics guide sets them in order.

New since 2023

The newest shelf holds forty-two series from 2023 to 2026 and fills the last row of the home page. From 2023 come King the Land, in which a hotel heir who dislikes false smiles meets an employee famous for hers, Twinkling Watermelon, Hidden Love, Castaway Diva, about a would-be singer rescued after fifteen years on a deserted island, and Welcome to Samdal-ri.

The year 2024 brought Queen of Tears and Lovely Runner, two of the most discussed Korean series of recent times, along with Doctor Slump. The following year added When Life Gives You Tangerines, Bon Appétit, Your Majesty, Head Over Heels, Our Unwritten Seoul and the Chinese The First Frost.

Ten series first shown in 2026 are already listed, among them Perfect Crown, with IU and Byeon Woo-seok, and Can This Love Be Translated?, with Kim Seon-ho and Go Youn-jung. Their pages carry the cast, the score and the episode dates as they are recorded. The new since 2023 guide lists the shelf by year.

Top rated

The top rated shelf holds the twenty-five series that score 8.4 or higher from at least a hundred ratings. The newest entry leads it: Perfect Crown stands at 9.1 in its first months. Three series share 8.8, Reply 1988, Twinkling Watermelon and When Life Gives You Tangerines, and Head Over Heels follows at 8.7.

Five series stand at 8.6: Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, Alchemy of Souls, Lovely Runner, Bon Appétit, Your Majesty and Navillera. A large group at 8.5 includes Crash Landing on You, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-joo, Business Proposal, Hotel Del Luna, Scarlet Heart: Ryeo, Mr. Queen, Jewel in the Palace, My Lovely Sam Soon, Extraordinary Attorney Woo and the Chinese Hidden Love.

Scores for drama series run higher than scores for films, since the people who rate a sixteen-hour story are mostly those who chose to finish it. The shelf is best read as a list of series whose audiences stayed to the end and were glad they did. The top rated page gives the order.

Actors to follow

The search box reads the names of actors, and following one performer is among the best ways through the catalogue. IU, a singer before she was an actress, appears in Dream High, The Producers, Scarlet Heart: Ryeo, Hotel Del Luna, When Life Gives You Tangerines and Perfect Crown, six series in six different registers. Hyun Bin can be seen as a young restaurant owner in My Lovely Sam Soon, a department store chief in Secret Garden and the army captain of Crash Landing on You.

Lee Min-ho leads Boys Over Flowers, The Heirs and The King: Eternal Monarch. Park Seo-jun stars in She Was Pretty and What's Wrong with Secretary Kim. Gong Yoo moved from the café owner of Coffee Prince to the immortal of Guardian: The Lonely and Great God nine years later, and Kim Go-eun plays opposite both Gong Yoo and Lee Min-ho in two fantasies by the same writer.

Among actresses, Shin Hae-sun has three very different parts in Mr. Queen, Angel's Last Mission: Love and See You in My 19th Life. Park Shin-hye appears in The Heirs and, a decade on, Doctor Slump. Shin Min-a leads Oh My Venus and Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, and Kim Hye-yoon stars in both Extraordinary You and Lovely Runner. In Japan, Takeru Satoh is the doctor of An Incurable Case of Love and the lost love of First Love.

Writers and their worlds

Korean drama is a writer's medium, and viewers follow authors as readers follow novelists. Kim Eun-sook wrote Secret Garden, A Gentleman's Dignity, The Heirs, Descendants of the Sun, Guardian: The Lonely and Great God and The King: Eternal Monarch, and her quick, quotable dialogue is recognisable in every one of them.

The Hong sisters, Hong Jung-eun and Hong Mi-ran, specialise in fantasy with a comic edge: A Korean Odyssey, Hotel Del Luna and Alchemy of Souls are theirs. Noh Hee-kyung writes about ordinary people with unusual tenderness in It's Okay, That's Love and Our Blues. Park Ji-eun wrote both The Producers and Crash Landing on You, and later Queen of Tears.

The director Shin Won-ho and the writer Lee Woo-jung made the three Reply series and went on to produce Resident Playbook. Their dramas share a method: a group of friends, a great deal of food, the popular songs of a particular year and a patience with small events that most television lacks.

Food on the screen

Food runs through Asian drama like a second language, and the catalogue could be read as a menu. Jewel in the Palace is the grandest of the cooking stories, and Bon Appétit, Your Majesty the newest. Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories, Samurai Gourmet, The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House and The Emperor's Cook make the Japanese shelf a delight for anyone who cooks.

Elsewhere food is the setting more than the subject. Coffee Prince takes place in a café, My Lovely Sam Soon in a French restaurant, Tastefully Yours in a small kitchen in the provinces and Brewing Love at a craft brewery. The families of Reply 1988 send dishes from door to door along their alley every evening, and that single running joke says more about neighbourliness than a page of dialogue could.

One story, three countries

Asian television shares its stories freely, and the guide lets a viewer compare versions. The best example is a Japanese comic about a cheerful, average schoolgirl who declares her love to the most brilliant boy in her year and then, after an earthquake damages her home, moves into his house. Taiwan filmed it in 2005 as It Started With a Kiss, Korea in 2010 as Playful Kiss and Japan in 2013 as Mischievous Kiss: Love in Tokyo. All three are here, and fans argue happily over which couple is best.

Boys Over Flowers also began as a Japanese comic and was filmed in several countries; the Korean version of 2009 is the one in the guide. Good Morning Call and From Me to You: Kimi ni Todoke come from the same tradition of school romance comics. In the other direction, Korean web comics supplied True Beauty, Cheese in the Trap, Yumi's Cells, Business Proposal and Misaeng: Incomplete Life, and the Chinese novels of one popular author gave the screen both Hidden Love and The First Frost.

Seeing two versions of one story is a pleasant way to notice what each country's television does best: the Japanese version is usually the briefest and the most faithful, the Korean the most polished, and the Chinese-language one the most generous with time.

Choosing by the time you have

A drama is a larger commitment than a film, so length matters. For a single evening there is Splash Splash Love, whose two parts together last about as long as a feature film. For a weekend the short series shelf offers more than fifty choices, among them Business Proposal, Navillera, First Love and Quartet.

The standard Korean series of sixteen episodes fills two or three weeks at an episode a night, which is how most were first broadcast: two episodes a week over two months. Crash Landing on You, Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, Extraordinary Attorney Woo and Queen of Tears are all of this length. Twenty episodes was the custom a little earlier, as with Reply 1988, The Heirs and Secret Garden.

For those who want a companion for a season of the year, the long historical series are waiting. Jewel in the Palace has fifty-four episodes, Jewel in the Crown sixty and The Great Queen Seondeok sixty-two. The Chinese comedy My Own Swordsman has eighty-one short ones, and Nirvana in Fire is listed with 104 across its two seasons. Each series page shows the count beside the year, and My Touch List remembers the episode reached.

Choosing by the company you keep

For viewing with parents or grandparents, the family dramas are the surest ground. Reply 1988 is as much about the mothers and fathers of the alley as about their children. Go Ahead is a portrait of two devoted fathers. Navillera and When Life Gives You Tangerines honour an older generation directly, and Our Blues gives its finest episodes to a mother and son.

With teenagers, the school shelf is the place to begin: True Beauty, Extraordinary You, Twinkling Watermelon and the Thai My School President are all bright and good-natured. Dream High and The King's Avatar will please anyone with an ambition in music or gaming, and Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-joo is among the kindest series about young athletes.

For a couple, the choice is wide. Because This Is My First Life is a thoughtful story of two housemates who marry for practical reasons and learn what the word means. Something in the Rain and One Spring Night, by the same director, are slow, realistic romances. Encounter begins with a chance meeting in Havana, and Run On pairs a sprinter with a film translator who speak, at first, in entirely different ways.

Places in the guide

Seoul is the capital of the catalogue, seen from the rooftop rooms of young workers and the towers of the conglomerates alike. Beyond it, Korean drama has made several places famous. Jeju Island is the setting of Our Blues, Welcome to Samdal-ri and When Life Gives You Tangerines. The seaside village of Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha was filmed in the port of Pohang and draws visitors still. Crash Landing on You travels to Switzerland for its happiest scenes, and Guardian: The Lonely and Great God opens a door from Seoul to the old city of Quebec.

Japan appears through its cities and seasons: the back streets of Shinjuku in Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories, the lanes of Kyoto in The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House, snowy Hokkaido in First Love and the mountain resort of Quartet. The Chinese modern romances are set among the campuses and glass towers of the great coastal cities, and the costume dramas in palaces rebuilt at full scale.

Songs and idols

Music is close to the surface of Asian drama. Every Korean series has its own songs, written for it and released one by one as the episodes are shown, and many viewers know a drama by its melodies before they have seen a scene. The themes of Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, Descendants of the Sun and Crash Landing on You were chart successes in their own right.

Singers from pop groups often turn to acting, and the guide shows many at work. Dream High was built around them. EXO Next Door puts the members of a famous group in the house beside an ordinary girl. Junho and Yoona, both from well-known groups, lead King the Land, and Cha Eun-woo appears in True Beauty and My ID is Gangnam Beauty. Top Management and Castaway Diva are stories about the music business itself.

Elsewhere music is the subject. Nodame Cantabile is filled with Beethoven, Rachmaninoff and Gershwin, played by a student orchestra. Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol follows a pianist who starts again in a small town, Twinkling Watermelon forms a school band, and the four players of Quartet rehearse between their quarrels.

Friendship and family

Romance sells a drama, and friendship is often what viewers remember. Hello, My Twenties! is at heart about five women learning to rely on one another. Thirty-Nine follows three friends on the eve of forty, and Be Melodramatic three flatmates at thirty, written by a film director with a sharp comic ear. Reply 1988 is about five childhood friends before it is about anything else.

Families take many shapes in these stories. Go Ahead argues that a family can be chosen. Extraordinary Attorney Woo is anchored by a father who runs a small snack shop and raised his daughter alone. My Liberation Notes watches three grown siblings who travel a long way to work each day from their parents' house in the countryside, and it became a quiet favourite for its honesty about tiredness and hope.

Workplaces become families too. The hospital staff of Dr. Romantic, the trading team of Misaeng: Incomplete Life and the small company of Gaus Electronics are groups of colleagues who end by caring for each other, which is one reason these series are so comforting to return to.

A series for every mood

For an evening that needs laughter, the guide suggests Business Proposal, Mr. Queen or the Japanese school comedy From Today, It's My Turn!!, set among the playground rivalries of the 1980s. For a good cry there are Autumn in My Heart, Uncontrollably Fond and The Hours of My Life, in which a young man facing illness chooses how to live.

For calm, few things on television equal Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories, Summer Strike, about a woman who leaves her job in the city for a seaside town and a library, or When the Weather Is Fine. For wonder, there are Alchemy of Souls and Hotel Del Luna. For encouragement on a hard week, Navillera, Misaeng: Incomplete Life and Daily Dose of Sunshine are the ones that viewers recommend to their friends.

And for a first Asian drama of all, three are suggested above the rest: Crash Landing on You for romance on a grand scale, Reply 1988 for warmth, and Extraordinary Attorney Woo for a heroine who is impossible to forget.

Habits of the form

Newcomers to Asian drama soon notice a set of shared habits, and knowing them adds to the fun. Many Korean romances begin with a childhood meeting that the leads have forgotten, as in She Was Pretty and What's Wrong with Secretary Kim. A contract often stands in for a courtship: a pretended engagement in Business Proposal, a marriage of convenience in Because This Is My First Life, Full House and The Full-Time Wife Escapist, a hired partner in Love in Contract. The pleasure lies in watching the paperwork turn into feeling.

There is usually a second suitor, kind and patient, whom half the audience prefers, and the debate over him is part of the viewing; Reply 1988 and True Beauty produced famous examples. There is often a difficult parent with a firm view of a suitable match, a best friend with a romance of her own, and a scene in which one lead shelters the other from sudden rain.

The better series use these habits knowingly. Extraordinary You turns them into its subject, since its heroine can see the conventions of the comic she lives in. Yumi's Cells shows the committee of tiny characters inside one woman's head who debate every decision of her love life, and Her Private Life treats a fan's devotion with affection instead of mockery.

Names, titles and subtitles

A few practical notes help when searching. Many series are known by more than one English title: Guardian: The Lonely and Great God is widely called Goblin, Jewel in the Palace is also known as Dae Jang Geum, and Hello, My Twenties! as Age of Youth. The guide uses the title recorded by TMDB and shows the original title in Korean, Chinese, Japanese or Thai script on the series page, and the search box finds a series by either.

Korean and Chinese names are written with the family name first, so Hyun Bin's character in Crash Landing on You is Ri Jeong-hyeok, of the Ri family. Searching for part of a name is enough; typing Seo-jun or Lusi brings up the right performers. Which languages of subtitle are offered depends on the service that carries a series in your country, and JustWatch shows those services after one touch of the Watch now button.

Episode numbers can also differ between sources. Some Korean broadcasters once divided each hour into two half-hour parts, so that a sixteen-hour series such as Extraordinary You or One Spring Night is listed with thirty-two episodes. The story is the same length; only the counting changed, and the series page follows the count on record.

My Touch List

My Touch List, beside the search field, is your own list of series to watch. One touch on the list button of a series page adds it, and on that page you can mark the episode you have reached, which matters a good deal when a story runs for sixteen hours. The list is held in the browser on your own device, so it opens immediately, and its page can save it as a file. The My Touch List page explains each step.

Experienced viewers keep the list short. One long series in progress, one short series for the weekend and two or three waiting their turn is plenty: Reply 1988 on weeknights, First Love for Saturday and Hidden Love and Alchemy of Souls in reserve would keep a household content for two months.

The list is also a kindness to memory. Drama titles are easily confused, and several in the guide begin with the same words. A list that records which were finished and which episode comes next saves a good deal of searching.

The OneTouch TV series card

Every series on OneTouch TV opens as a card with rounded corners on the same navy ground as the home page. The title stands at the head, with the original title in its own script beneath it where the two differ. Rounded labels give the year, the number of episodes and the genres, and the score out of ten is shown with the count of ratings behind it. The summary sets up the story in a few sentences and keeps the ending to itself. The cast is listed with the names of the characters, which is helpful when the same actor returns in another series, and the writers and the broadcaster follow. Under them the seasons unfold into a list of every episode with its date of first broadcast. The country selector and the coral Watch now button are placed at the top of the card, within reach of a thumb on a telephone.

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