Television series

Mr. Sunshine

Name: Mr. Sunshine
Genre: Drama, Romance, History
Released: 2018
Cast: Lee Byung Hun, Kim Tae Ri, Yoo Yun Suk, Byeon Yo Han, Kim Min Jung

Other titles called Mr. Sunshine: the 2011 series (ABC).

Period drama

Mr. Sunshine follows a boy sold into slavery who returns to a crumbling Joseon dynasty as a U.S. Marine, falling for a noblewoman turned resistance fighter. It's tvN's most lavish swing — sweeping, gorgeous, unapologetically romantic — turning genuinely tragic Korean history into twenty-four hours of candlelit melodrama, gunfights, and slow-burn yearning. For anyone who wants their heartbreak served with rifles.

TVMaze rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like sweeping period epics where a love story is tangled up with a nation sliding toward colonial rule, and you don't mind a slow build to get there.

Skip it if you want a tight, fast-moving story, since this one lingers on mood and atmosphere more than on plot, and its romance moves at a patient pace.

What it asks of you: Expect a long commitment: twenty-four episodes of roughly seventy minutes, unhurried scenes, and a shifting tone that moves from palace politics to tender romance to harder history.

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

If you liked this

Guardian: The Lonely and Great God2016

Same writer, Kim Eun-sook, doing what she does best — an impossible romance stretched across centuries, gorgeous visuals, and a slow ache instead of a punchline. Her other masterpiece.

But Trades gunfights and history for fantasy and grim reapers — less politics, more magic, a real tonal shift.

Guardian: The Lonely and Great God poster

Pachinko2022

A multigenerational saga spanning colonial Korea to modern Japan, told with the same devastating scope, tracing what happens after the empire Mr. Sunshine fights against actually wins.

But Jumps across decades and languages nonlinearly, demanding more patience than a straight love story.

The Age of Shadows2016

A stylish, tense thriller about Korean independence fighters against Japanese colonial police, all suits, trains, and double agents — the resistance plotline turned up to eleven.

But No romance to speak of, and the espionage plotting can get genuinely labyrinthine.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Mr. Sunshine

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Kingdom2019

Both dramatize the actual collapse of the Joseon dynasty from within; Kingdom swaps the American Marine and colonial intrigue for a plague eating the court alive, asking the same question — what does a dying kingdom deserve?

Same fracturing Joseon dynasty, same court corruption and rot — reimagined as zombie horror, with a crown prince fighting a plague instead of an empire.

But Zero romance, all dread — a genuinely different animal if you came for the love story.

Assassination Classroom2015

A gorgeous, gun-slinging thriller about resistance fighters targeting a collaborator in 1930s Korea — same era, same fury, pulpier and more action-forward.

But Broader and less melancholic than Mr. Sunshine, favouring set-pieces over slow-burn heartbreak.

The Handmaiden2016

Park Chan-wook's twisty, ravishing colonial-era thriller shares the setting and class tension but wraps it around a con and a forbidden romance with real teeth.

But Far more explicit and morally slippery, with twists that demand your full attention.

The Empress Ki2013

A sprawling historical epic about a Korean woman who rises to become a Yuan empress — same scale, same scheming, same fierce heroine energy as Go Ae-shin.

But Nearly double the episode count of Mr. Sunshine — a serious commitment of an evening or fifty.

Descendants of the Sun2016

Another Kim Eun-sook romance, this one modern, about a soldier and a doctor falling for each other against danger and duty — same DNA, lighter history.

But The contemporary setting strips away the historical weight that makes Mr. Sunshine sting.

The King: Eternal Monarch2020

Kim Eun-sook again, crossing parallel worlds with a modern detective and an alternate-history emperor — her romantic instincts dialled into sci-fi instead of colonial drama.

But The multiverse plotting gets fiddly and lands less emotionally than her historical work.

Doctor Zhivago1965

Both use a crumbling empire as backdrop for a love that can't survive the history happening around it — Mr. Sunshine's genre grandparent, made half a century earlier on a different continent.

The 1965 epic that basically invented this shape of story — doomed love blooming in the last gasp of an old aristocratic world, swept away by revolution, on an operatic scale.

But Three hours long, decidedly old-fashioned in pace, and its politics are Russian, not Korean.

The Last Princess2016

This is the true, unglamorous version of exactly what Mr. Sunshine dramatizes — the royal family's real collapse under Japanese occupation, stripped of the gunfights and the love story that cushion it.

A quiet, devastating two-hour film about Deokhyeong, the actual last princess of the real Joseon royal family, stolen away to Japan as the empire fell — the true story behind the fiction.

But Grim and slow where Mr. Sunshine is swoony and fast; no romance softens the history here.