The Murky Stream

Bossam: Steal the Fate is similar to Takryu (The Murky Stream) in that both are Joseon-era stories centered on marginalized men surviving within a corrupt, rigid social system, following protagonists who live outside official power structures and are forced into morally gray choices, with narratives driven by class injustice, personal loss, and resistance to entrenched authority rather than idealized heroism, blending grounded action and emotional depth to show how ordinary lives are shaped—and often broken—by an unforgiving historical reality.

Kingdom and Takryu (The Murky Stream) are similar in that both are set in a harsh Joseon-era world shaped by corruption and class inequality, focus on character-driven development where protagonists are forced to grow under extreme pressure, and center on morally complex characters who confront systemic rot, survival, and responsibility, with the series prioritizing social critique, tension, and human cost over romance or idealized heroism.

Both focus on the struggle of lower class people and servants against an indifferent or cruel society and upper class.

Both focus on the lower class and how they're viewed with cruelty or indifference by the upper class. Both dramas have a wealthy FL who looks down upon and treats the lower class ML cruelly when he comes to her for some task/request in the first episode. Both MLs appear to/are hiding a secret past/identity.

East Palace is similar to Takryu (The Murky Stream) in that both are set in a harsh Joseon-era world shaped by danger, corruption, and hidden power, focus on characters forced into perilous roles beyond ordinary life, and build tension through mystery, moral struggle, and survival, with the series emphasizing atmosphere, character-driven development, and the cost of confronting overwhelming forces rather than light romance or idealized heroism.

Both are period dramas where male lead survives as a lawless person and second male lead is a government official. Both dramas are rough and brutal which shows how inequality in society destroys it.

Same time period and about war and the hard lives of commoners. About invading forces and then then every day commoners suffer oppression, poverty and illness.

Both of those dramas are similar, deciphering into the Joseon Era and explaining the male lead as they have the same rags to riches journey with rising to power and how they became to be.