BL Drama Lovers Club

 Casper:

I want to finish it so bad but I get so irrationally mad when they’re happy like your mom just died and she was so nice to both of you how can you move on that quickly??

It happens. It was pretty quick so I can understand.

Hello everyone! I'm finally trying to become active on MDL, and to me that includes joining some clubs. So might as well join one for my newest genre exploration!

My first ever BL was My Personal Weatherman when it first aired in the second half of 2023. I think I bought a Viki subscription for the first time just to watch it, since I wasn't really watching Asian dramas yet. 

Fast forward to the end of 2024, when I stumbled across a Pit Babe fanfic. I went to check out the drama and was HOOKED. 

I've still only watched 13 BL's as of now, but there are many more to come. My current favorites includes Semantic Error, Pit Babe, and See Your Love.

I'm always looking for new recs to add to my extensive drama watchlist, so please feel free to recommend away!

The Cursed Love

omg I am so mad right now! I hated the ending!  This show was a really fun watch for the first 6 episodes and I thought the story was creative and interesting. The MLs were great, especially Ongsa who was so beautiful and had an amazing voice. He sings the theme song which is really lovely. But The last two episodes went downhill in terms of writing. I just wasn’t as invested as I had been up until that point. Somehow they lost the connection with the audience, so I just wasn’t feeling everything as much towards the end. Plus the main couple are supposed to have a love across all lifetimes but they didn’t continue to sell that through the ending at all! they had the main character die! and his lover barely reacted. That’s Not an ending I usually like but a few shows make it work by showing the price paid for that sacrifice. But no one was sad. No one was mourning. Everyone seemed to move on 3 months later. And reincarnated Siwat (Ongsa) was not enough for me. How do we know he’d even remember his past lives?! And to also kill another person the audience Loved and not mourn him either?! A chart reading RIP doesn’t begin to cut it! So only the GL couple got a HEA. I liked them but this is a BL and they kill off members of both BL couples?! Too much.  I understand the ending in terms of the supernatural storyline but it got really caught up in that and forgot how everyone was reacting emotionally. Plus just too many people died in the last episode! Even if we didn’t love them all, it didn’t serve the plot in my opinion.

this show had great visuals, beautiful scenery, an excellent theme song, an interesting concept, a multi-layered story, and enough complexity to keep me guessing what exactly would happen next. But the ending was just such a huge dissappointment. I gave it a 7.5.

 dora:

Burnout Syndrome  ep1

I think I'll wait for 2-3 episodes and then do a catch-up, but my expectations for this one are super high. Gun Attaphan is one of my favourite BL actors (and a cutie, too - not that I would let myself be affected by such things *cough*).

 Simi_Tutu:

I just wanted to share a favorite of  mine from this year:

Our Youth

Yes, that was also one of my own personal faves from the early part of this year. I would even venture to call it a BL masterpiece.

Some people subsequently blacklisted it because of the Kenshin scandal, but I personally don't let scandals involving a particular actor affect how I see the work of so many people - not only the other actors but also the many people behind the scenes do put so much hard effort into it.

 Italophilia:

Chinese BLs I like:

@yoursjinssue: This is a really good list from Italophilia. My three personal favourite Chinese BLs are "Stay With Me", "Litchi Island" and most recently"Revenged Love" - but each of these is very different from the other, so it really depends on your taste.

Note on "Stay With Me": Sadly the planned sequel never happened, so it left us with an infuriating cliffhanger ending - but it's a masterpiece nevertheless.

Note on "Litchi Island": It's more a soft and gentle love story, with such beautiful cinematography - and most remarkable of all, it was a very-low-budget indie made by a tiny crew. Considering that, I would call it a masterpiece. Useful tip: The subtitles are tiny and hard-coded, so one can't change the size - but it's available on Youtube in UHD (2K), which makes the tiny subtitles much more readable (especially on a larger screen), not to mention enhancing the beautiful cinematography.

 wonni:

Hello everyone!

Welcome. "My Personal Weatherman", "See Your Love" and "Semantic Error" are among my faves - and although my feelings about "Pit Babe" are somewhat more qualified, there were a lot of good things about it. One of the nice things about this group is regularly being reminded of enjoyable past watches and getting my memories of them refreshed.  In these four titles, you also have a nice geographic representation not only of BL-dominating Thailand (at least in quantity, if not always quality) but also Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

There are so many good BLs I could recommend that I don't know where to start, so instead I'll just point to Dora's list above of "Favorite BLs". (She and I have similar tastes, so my own list would probably be quite similar.)

ETA: Same goes for Art Girl's excellent list (below). She and I likewise usually have a high level of BL overlap (despite the fact that I'm an insensitive, grouchy and artistically talentless guy).

 wonni:

I'm always looking for new recs to add to my extensive drama watchlist, so please feel free to recommend away!

Hi Wonnie! Welcome to the club, STAY!! LOL

I have a few lists you might be interested in. 

Top BL Drama Picks - All 119 of my fav BLs 

Waiting to Air List - The majority are BL titles waiting to be released, including the newest titles from GMMTV for 2026-2027.

I see you like historical C-dramas too. I have a fav list on my pfp, just click "View All" and all my lists come up, lol.  Since you like music too you'll see a list for Drama Soundtracks.

@KoreaDramafan21

i see a few answers to your request for recommendations but since you haven’t been given that many yet I’ll add my two cents.

1. A person that is discovering their sexuality ( being gay or bi etc.) like the person in My Sweetheart Jom even if that plays little part in my named series and is kind of a bad exampl.

there are so many good BLs about this but here are a few of my favorites:

I Cannot Reach You

Takara-kun & Amagi-kun

About Youth

Cherry Blossoms After Winter

I Told Sunset About You (many consider this a BL masterpiece)

My Love Mix-Up (Japanese version)

Secrets Happen on the Litchi Island (another masterpiece, see @P434245’s notes about it in the post above)

or

2. city person or rich person or arrogant person meets person ( like when a person that lives in a city goes to the farmers kind of like My Sweetheart Jom. Thats one example of city person. I don't know how to explain it

I’m still not sure what you’re looking for here but nothing comes to mind. I think you need to be more specific. Like there is a character type called a “tsundere” in Japanese who is cold and closed off but opens up with time. I’m sure we can find or make a list of best tsundere characters in BLs. But if you’re looking for something different, please explain more or give another example.

3. A person that is depressed, has some kind of trauma/PTSD or other mental disorders? Or physical injuries like a broken knee, arm etc. ML helps this person or joins him on healing journey.

Our Youth and The Eighth Sense and Our Dining Table and See Your Love have already been recommended. Those are all excellent!

I would add:

Moonlight Chicken

Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo

Love for Love’s Sake

Love Is Better the Second Time Around

Last Twilight

That should keep you busy. We are always happy to provide recommendations here.

 RXinw:

Me and Thee - episode 2

I started this some days ago and I am only now finishing the episode lol. I am still liking this series and intrigue to see where they take it.

---

To My Shore - episodes 3-4

I am still hooked after 4 episodes. China has a way of making extreme red flag ML attractive and likable somehow lol.

The story about Fan Xiao's mother's death is quite heartbreaking, but the fact that he is also using that tragedy to win pity from You Shulang offsets sympathy just a little for me, which I think strikes a nice emotional balance with such a tragic background story.

Fan Xiao is certainly a manipulator, and I look forward to his future schemes lol

I agree about China making red and even black flags attractive. I’m also hooked on To My Shore.