Television series

It's Okay, It's Love

Name: It's Okay, It's Love
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Romance
Released: 2014
Cast: Jo In Sung, Gong Hyo Jin, Seong Dong Il, Lee Kwang Soo

It's Okay, It's Love pairs a bestselling novelist's OCD with a young psychiatrist's own buried trauma, using their prickly, funny courtship as a way into real conversations about mental illness. SBS's melodrama instincts stay intact — big emotions, a warm ensemble, radio-show interludes — but the show treats diagnosis as neither punchline nor tragedy. It's a tender, occasionally messy hangout for anyone who wants romance with genuine psychological stakes.

TVMaze rating

3.9

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy slow-building romantic comedies where two wounded people's oddities become the very thing that draws them together, and you don't mind a mood that swings from giggles to tender sadness.

Skip it if you want a brisk, plot-driven romance, since this one lingers on everyday routines and romantic dithering, and its love triangle can feel like a long wait.

What it asks of you: Sixteen hour-long episodes, so it is a real commitment, with a gentle pace that rewards patience and shifts between light banter and heavier moments about anxiety and family.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

It's Okay to Not Be Okay2020

The clearest spiritual sibling: fairy-tale visuals wrapped around real trauma, a prickly slow-burn romance, and a cast of damaged people learning to be gentle with each other.

But It leans harder into stylised symbolism and fantasy sequences, which can feel precious if you preferred the original's grounded tone.

Kill Me, Heal Me2015

Same network, same era, same basic bet — that a serious psychiatric condition can drive a romance without cheapening it — this time with dissociative identity disorder and a thriller edge.

But More heightened and soapy, using the illness as engine for melodrama and plot twists rather than quiet character study.

Daily Dose of Sunshine2023

Told from inside a psychiatric ward through a nurse's eyes, it's calmer and more clinically careful, treating patients and staff with the same unhurried compassion.

But Episodic and vignette-driven rather than romance-first, so it moves slower and offers less swoon.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from It's Okay, It's Love

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Fisher King1991

Like Jae Yul, its hero survives trauma by building an elaborate inner world, and it's love — messy, undignified, real — that eventually talks him out of it. Same idea, filtered through mythic American excess instead of K-drama tenderness.

Terry Gilliam's shaggy, magic-realist fable about two broken men finding their way back to functioning through friendship and love, equal parts hilarious and heartbroken.

But Its early-90s New York chaos and full-blown fantasy sequences are a different animal from the show's restrained, contemporary melancholy.

My Mister2018

A quieter, more devastating meditation on loneliness and unlikely connection, with two of the finest lead performances in Korean television.

But Minimal romance and a deliberately subdued pace; this is for patience and heartbreak, not chemistry-driven fun.

Hospital Playlist2020

Trades one hospital's psych ward for another's whole building, keeping the same warm, funny, low-stakes-but-emotionally-rich ensemble energy across a big cast of doctors and friends.

But Splits attention across many characters, so no single relationship gets the focused intensity of Jae Yul and Hae Soo's.

Answer Me 19882015

For the same tonal seesaw between comedy and real tenderness — here aimed at nostalgia and neighbourhood friendship rather than illness, but just as emotionally generous.

But No mental health thread at all; if that was the draw, this scratches a different, cosier itch.

Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo2016

Lighter and younger, but it still threads anxiety and self-doubt through a genuinely charming, funny college romance with terrific lead chemistry.

But Considerably fluffier — don't expect the same weight of psychological detail or adult stakes.

Move to Heaven2021

A completely different register — grief, death, and autism handled with extraordinary tenderness and restraint — for when you want the emotional honesty without the rom-com scaffolding.

But There's no romance and very little comic relief; it's a beautiful, sad show, not a warm hangout.

Extraordinary Attorney Woo2022

Another charming lead whose neurodivergence is written with real specificity rather than as quirk, folded into a workplace dramedy with a sweet, slow-building romance.

But The legal case-of-the-week structure pulls focus from the central relationship more than you might want.

Monk2002

Both put a man's OCD at the absolute centre of the story and every relationship in it — but where the show treats it as a wound needing tenderness, Monk plays it, unapologetically, as a punchline and a superpower.

An American procedural comedy where a brilliant detective's crippling OCD becomes his investigative gift, solving cases through the very compulsions that ruin his life.

But Broad, case-of-the-week sitcom rhythms are about as far from slow-burn Korean melodrama as television gets.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest1975

Both spend real time inside the walls of psychiatric treatment and ask hard questions about diagnosis, control, and dignity. This one just answers with rage instead of hope.

The great furious classic about a psychiatric institution, and about who gets to decide what sanity looks like — anchored by one of the all-time great performances.

But Bleak, angry, and utterly uninterested in romance or comfort; it will not send you to bed feeling warm.