I'm watching Kairos right now and loving it and it made me wonder if you had any recommendations for good kdramas without any romance in them.
Hi anon! Yes I definitely understand that feeling cause sometimes you’re really not in the mood for any sort of romance and that’s when these shows come in!
365: Repeat The Year - This kdrama is one of my favs of 2020 and basically follows a group of people as they travel back in time one year in order to fix their regrets only to find out that things are not as simple as they seemed once they start dying one-by-one. The male and female lead in this are extremely competent and make a wonderful team.
38 Task Force - Though not my favorite con artist show out there, this kdrama follows an insurance investigator who hires a conman to help him get delinquent tax evaders to pay their taxes who then gathers a team and has his own hidden agenda. The bromance between our male leads is pretty solid here though I did get a little tired of how much more screen time the insurance investigator got in comparison to the conman.
Avengers Social Club - This kdrama is probs one of the most underrated on this list as it follows a trio of women in their 40s who become friends and then team up in order to fix their lives whether that’s through getting revenge on their husbands or learning how to be more independent. The best part of this show is low key the mother/son relationship between the female lead and the son her husband had with a mistress.
Bad Guys - If you think of what Suicide Squad should have been, that’s what this show is. We basically follow a group of criminals as they get released to police custody to work with a detective in order to hunt down other criminals and work off some of their jail-time. The writing in this show is fantastic as is the acting and the only complaint I would have is that the female cop is really underused in this drama and ends up acting more like a damsel than a cop.
Big Issue - This kdrama follows an ex award winning reporter who’s got a terminally ill daughter, a wife who divorces him, and a whole host of addiction problems. He gets bribed into working as a paparazzo by the editor-in-chief of a magazine and joins a group of paparazzi as they undercover corruption in high society. There is some romance here between the male and female leads but it’s secondary to the plot of this show so I don’t think that it should turn someone who’s looking to avoid romance off!
Chief Of Staff - Though on paper this kdrama is supposedly a political drama, think less West Wing and more Scandal when going into this show with how it focuses less on the issues and more on defeating enemies and sucking up to the rich. It follows a group of politicians and their senior aides as we begin to follow our main leads going from good people to rolling around in the mud like everyone else. Once again there is romance in this show but it’s not only minor but also the most adult relationship I’ve seen portrayed in a drama without any of the typical romance tropes.
Chip-In/United Effort To Accomplish One Thing - This kdrama is basically the kdrama version of the movie Knives Out in that it’s a murder mystery set around one family as we follow the police try to figure out who killed the head of the family and why. Secrets get exposed, boundaries are pushed, and there’s no romance to be found in this show at all.
Circle - If you’re into aliens, then this might be the kdrama for you. This show is one of my absolute favorites yet super underrated cause I don’t think a lot of people know how good the writing is in this drama. We concurrently follow two college students in 2017 as they investigate a rash of suicides and a detective in 2037 as he tries to hunt down the secret of the technology-based crime free city that he lives beside. There is romance in this show but it’s mostly just hinted towards and it’s not a main focus.
Hot Stove League - This kdrama is actually less of a sports drama and actually more of an office drama set around the management side of a baseball team as we follow our main leads in taking the worst baseball team in the league and trying to make them into champions while simultaneously trying to convince the company that owns them not to disband them. Fair warning though: we don’t actually get to see our team play any baseball so if that’s what you’re looking for, this might not be the drama for you!
Kairos - Though you’ve actually seen this kdrama and it’s the reason for the list to exist in the first place, I still thought I’d throw it on just for people who haven’t checked it out yet! It’s another show that takes place over two timelines in which the male lead is living 1 month ahead of the female lead. They can talk to each other for one minute every day at 10:33 PM and decide to work together to unravel a mystery in which his daughter dies and her mom disappears. I do have to say this drama feels like it’s more closely related to something like Meet Me @ 1006 (minus the romance) than something like Signal despite the similar premise.
Law School: Think How To Get Away With Murder but murder mystery style so rather than following a bunch of murderers trying to hide their murder, we have a bunch of people trying to solve a murder. The OST is killer, the writing is tight, and I really enjoy every single ensemble character and the storylines they get. I think the law school setting is super unique to a kdrama and there is no romance in this show unless you like to headcanon the leads relationship as such.
Leverage - This kdrama is actually an adaptation of the American show Leverage and though if you’d ask me, I’d say I prefer the American version, this kdrama isn’t half bad either! It’s a bit of a love letter to the original though it definitely gives everything more of a Korean spin including the fact that it streamlines the story so there’s an overarching mystery rather than the procedural the original is. It follows an ex-insurance investigator who puts together a team of con artists in order to hunt down the mystery behind his son’s death. There are a lot of episodic cases to solve but a lot of them tend to connect back to the male lead’s son.
Liar Game - Set in a world where contestants get randomly chosen to participate in a game show where the name of the game is to lie and cheat and deceive in order to make money, this kdrama is an absolutely underrated gem! It’s actually based off of a jdrama which is based off of a manga and though this kdrama is the only version of the story I’ve seen, I really enjoyed it! The female lead is super naive and ends up hiring a conman to help her win the game show and along the way they discover that there’s more to the game than what they thought. If you like mind games and puzzles, this is the drama for you!
Navillera: If you ever wanted to watch a show and cry your eyes out, check this drama out. The main focus of this show is the relationship between a teen ballerino and an old man who always dreamed of doing ballet. The two learn from each other and become better people and we ask the question of when is it too late to chase your dreams?
Partners For Justice/Investigation Couple - This kdrama is one of the more unique takes on a detective show that I’ve seen cause of the way it places emphasis on using forensics to solve murder cases. There are two seasons of this show and though I think the second season is the better, the first is still pretty fun if you’re able to ignore how naive the female lead is before she learns to be a good prosecutor.
Pied Piper - Though at first glance this is another detective show, like Partners For Justice, it’s unique in that it follows a group of negotiators rather than normal cops or prosecutors as they solve small cases and try to hunt down a terrorist that took the lives of the male and female lead’s loved ones. There’s no romance in this show unless you see the chemistry between the leads as more than platonic and it’s definitely one of my favorites!
Player - This kdrama follows another group of con artists as they scam bad people out of their money all the while there’s something more happening behind the scenes. It’s one of the more comedic dramas on this list with no romance but a pretty solid found family.
Please Come Back, Mister - If you are looking for comedy, this kdrama is the one for you but what makes it special is that alongside this comedy there are also tons of moments that will make you cry and others that will break your heart and that’s the secret behind the success of this show. It follows two men who die but are sent back to resolve any lingering regrets they had. One of the men ends up in a handsome chaebol’s body while the other ends up in a woman and hijinks ensue. There’s technically no romance in this show unless you count flashbacks or the romance from the lives of our men before they died. Everyone should be watching this gem!
Signal - This kdrama is definitely my favorite detective show on this list and maybe I’m biased as it was the first of this kind of story that I had watched. It’s another show with two timelines though in this one it follows a male police profiler and a female detective as they use a radio to cross space and time to work together to solve cold cases. Honestly if you haven’t seen this one yet, what are you waiting for??
Stranger/Secret Forest - Despite seeming like this kdrama would be the typical prosecutor works with a cop in order to solve crimes, in actuality this show is more like an investigation/revenge drama in which we follow our main leads as they weed out corruption in the police force and the prosecution. The highlight of this show is how competent our leads are and what a good team they make. There are also two seasons of this show!
Sell Your Haunted House - If you ever watched shows like Hotel Del Luna or Master Of The Sun and thought wow this show would have been perfect if only the romance wasn’t included then this is the perfect show for you to watch. It follows a female lead who is this dark and broody exorcist and a male lead who’s this cinnamon roll of a psychic as they work together to remove lingering spirits from the world while also realizing that their pasts are connected and trying to solve the mystery of how their parental figures died. I love this show for the world it builds, the found family aspect, and the way the show flips typical male and female gender roles without making it seem like the female lead needs to change.
Taxi Driver: At its very core this show follows a team as they take on clients who have fallen victim to one thing or another and after the law has failed them turn to our Rainbow Taxi Service in order to get revenge but on a more meta level it’s a show that questions what justice is. Are our heroes no better than those they’re hunting? Is the law too soft? There’s no romance in this show and I really like the whole heist feel of each weekly case as well as the bond between our team. Another nice thing about this show is that we dive into the middle of our team’s mission rather than at the start so the world feels more lived in.
The Confidence Man JP - This jdrama is actually the only one on my list cause I tend to prefer romantic jdramas and once again it’s a con artist show (can you tell I adore those??) In this case though it’s more of a procedural than any of the kdrama con artist shows on this list as it follows a threesome of con artists as they scam bad people out of their money and there’s really no romance or overarching storyline. There is a miniseries sequel to this show and two movies that follow it so it’s a pretty expansive universe!
The Idolmaster KR - If you’ve ever watched any of the idol animes that Japan puts out, this is basically the Korean live action version of one of those shows! It follows a group of female idol trainees from all over East Asia as they work together and compete against one another to become full idols under the supervision of a famous male producer who’s down on his luck. This show is definitely more on the lighthearted side of the spectrum but I enjoyed it for what it was.
The King’s Avatar - This cdrama is also the only cdrama on my list cause once again I usually prefer to watch romantic cdramas but I’m also a sucker for gaming shows which is why I originally checked this drama out. Not only did I like the game in this world better than a lot of the games in other dramas but I also really liked that it was an underdog story and how much it focused on only gaming and nothing else. It follows a pro gamer who gets kicked out of his pro team only to come back with a group of amateur gamers in order win the league. It’s actually based on a Chinese anime which is based on a Chinese web novel and though I’ve seen neither of those, in my opinion this cdrama is fun!
Voice - If you’re looking for more of the typical detective story in which we follow cops as they solve crimes and hunt down serial killers, this is the kdrama for you! It’s got three seasons and though the male lead switches from the first season to the second, it’s still really fun to watch the mystery unfold. The thing that differentiates this drama from others though is in the fact that it actually follows the cops that are first responders which is fun. Though I prefer the male lead from the second and third season, the serial killer in the first season is better!
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