I felt the need for a light-hearted K-drama and Netflix assured me Start-Up (tvN 2020) fit the bill. It’s certainly at the lighter end of TV fare but not the comedy I was hoping for. It’s basically a cheesy romance with a B storyline about tech start-ups.

As always, the centre of the story is a love triangle. This one is more convoluted than most, but actually did keep me guessing for a few episodes which guy would get the girl.

We meet Seo Dal-mi as a young teen. When her parents divorce they tell Dal-mi and her older sister In-jae to choose which parent they want to live with. The sisters choose differently and are separated. To cheer Dal-mi up, her Grandmother hatches a plan with her 18-year-old lodger, Han Ji-pyeong. He becomes a penfriend to Dal-mi but they don’t use his real name, they pick the name of a kid from a story in the newspaper: Nam Do-san. For a year they exchange letters and Dal-mi believes herself in love. Then Ji-pyeong leaves for university and the letters stop.

Cut to 15 years later. Dal-mi (played by Bae Suzy of Uncontrollably Fond and Anna), having chosen to stay with her perpetually in debt father, couldn’t afford university. She works a series of temp jobs and dreams of following in her now-deceased father’s footsteps and starting her own business.

The spur to action is Dal-mi bumping into her estranged sister. Won In-jae (Kang Han-na) has taken her ultra-rich stepfather’s name, and his nepotism. She is CEO of a company spun off from his. Dal-mi immediately bluffs that she is about to launch a company with her old penpal Nam Do-san. And then runs to her Grandmother begging for Do-san’s contact details.

Here’s the part where credulity is particularly stretched. Rather than introduce Dal-mi to Ji-pyeong (Kim Seon-ho), who is now a very rich, successful investor in tech companies, Grandmother instead begs Ji-pyeong to track down the real Nam Do-san from the newspaper article. It just so happens that Do-san (Nam Joo-hyuk from Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-Joo) is an AI developer who desperately needs funding for his start-up company. Sweet, naive Do-san is elated when Ji-pyeong shows up at his door and heartbroken when the reason isn’t interest in his company.

What should have been a one-night pretence so that Dal-mi can save face in front of her sister of course doesn’t stop there. For one thing, she and Do-san discover they have great chemistry. And then she and Do-san are both accepted into Sandbox, an accelerator for tech start-ups. Meanwhile, her sister has quit her job after years of mistreatment from her stepfather and she has also been accepted into Sandbox. So now the charade continues, with Do-san increasingly uncomfortable with lying to her. And as a mentor at Sandbox, Ji-pyeong now sees Dal-mi regularly too and is also falling for her.

As tends to be the case in these dramas, Dal-mi is uber capable, she has just never had the chance to shine. She’s smart, funny and loyal. Ji-pyeong has a facade of rich asshole but is actually quite decent – which is clear to us as Grandmother always calls him Good Boy.

In the first few episodes Do-san has some mannerisms that made him appear autistic, which I thought would be a really interesting choice for a main love interest. But that disappears so I think it was just intended to be the socially awkward trope of a software engineer.

Another way in which this was typical of K-drama is the car obsession. There are scenes that are basically adverts highlighting some fancy car’s features. There was one fantastic moment when Do-san has arrived at Sandbox by bike at the same time as Ji-pyeong drives up, and tells Ji-pyeong that as he lives nearby he should really consider cycling to work. Sadly, the only other time we see Do-san cycling he falls off his bike. It was almost brave enough to have a better message.

As for the AI tech stuff – they kinda throw everything in. The same team of 5 people is apparently able to develop image recognition, banking security and self-driving cars. What’s more interesting (to me) is the path of a start-up and the constant battle for funding. Our characters have to face hard truths about business plans and reading the fine print of contracts.

The supporting cast are a mixed bag of stereotypes and more interesting roles. I was intrigued by the introduction of Alex Kwon (Jasper Cho, Descendants of the Sun), a Korean-American investor who comes to Sandbox looking for talent for his megacompany. He has a lot of charm and it took me longer than the characters to realise he might be more complicated than a nice guy with deep pockets. In-jae is also more multifaceted than the rich bitch she is initially portrayed as.

This isn’t a deep or complicated story. There are some nice friendships built and family ties that are healed but the romance is front and centre. There is some unfortunate homophobia in the first couple of episodes and the cast is super homogenous even for a K-drama (if there’s one thing I know about tech companies, they are really international). But it still had that addictive quality I associate with K-drama and the key romantic moments truly felt romantic and beautiful.