Shows Like Start-Up
If you loved Start-Up's Drama and Comedy storytelling, these series deliver a similar experience — chosen for tone, narrative quality, and viewer satisfaction. Each includes where to stream it now.
★ Top Picks
Love Alarm
Love Alarm is an app that tells you if someone within a 10-meter radius has a crush on you. It quickly becomes a social phenomenon. While everyone talks about it and uses it to test their love and popularity, Jojo is one of the few people who have yet to download the app. However, she soon faces a love triangle situation between Sun-oh whom she starts to have feelings for, and Hye-young, who has had a huge crush on her.
UnREAL
Set against the backdrop of a hit dating competition show, Rachel is a young staffer whose sole job is to manipulate her relationships with and among the contestants to get the vital dramatic and outrageous footage the program's dispassionate executive producer demands.
Crash Course in Romance
The series follows the bittersweet relationship between a banchan shop owner whose daughter enters the war of Korea's college entrance exams, and a top hagwon instructor.
The Heirs
After a chance encounter in LA, two teens from different social backgrounds reunite at an exclusive high school attended by Korea's über rich.
No Gain No Love
Son Hae-yeong seeks out a fake wedding with her neighbourhood convenience store employee, Kim Ji-uk, to avoid missing out on a promotion.
Yumi's Cells
Yumi is a 30-year old, ordinary woman who struggles with expressing her feelings. Told from the perspective of the many brain cells in her head, she experiences growth in both her love life, her career, and finds happiness in the small joys of everyday life.
One Tree Hill
In Tree Hill, North Carolina two half brothers share a last name and nothing else. Brooding, blue-collar Lucas is a talented street-side basketball player, but his skills are appreciated only by his friends at the river court. Popular, affluent Nathan basks in the hero-worship of the town, as the star of his high school team. And both boys are the son of former college ball player Dan Scott whose long ago choice to abandon Lucas and his mother Karen, will haunt him long into his life with wife Deb and their son Nathan.
The Producers
A rookie producer joins the Korean Broadcasting System to be near his secret crush and enters the madcap world of network TV, where ratings rule.
More Shows Like Start-Up
Be Melodramatic
At the start of their 30s, three friends navigate the demanding entertainment industry while juggling love, careers and dreams.
Strong Woman Do Bong-Soon
Born with supernatural strength, Bong-soon fights evil and procures justice while getting tangled in a love triangle with her CEO boss and cop crush.
Welcome to Waikiki
Kang Dong-Goo dreams of becoming a movie director, but he is cynical due to bad luck. Cheon Joon-Ki wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and become an actor, but he is now just a minor actor. Bong-Doo-Sik came to Seoul to become a scenario writer, but things have not been easy for him.
Crazy Love
No Go Jin is the most popular mathematics instructor in the private education field and the CEO of GOTOP Education. Even though he has only a high school level education, he has achieved all of his success due to his extreme intelligence. He seems like a perfect man with a handsome appearance, high IQ, and wealth. He is also narcissistic. One day, he is suddenly warned that he will be murdered. Lee Shin A works as No Go Jin’s secretary. She is a diligent and responsible employee. Due to her quiet and introverted personality, she has little presence with her boss No Go Jin and her colleagues at work. Her colleagues begin to recognize her, because she has worked for the notorious No Go Jin for more than 1 year. She then learns that she does not have much time left to live.
Love Scout
Yoo Eun-ho, a single dad armed with perfection, becomes the secretary of Kang Ji-yun, the CEO of a popular headhunter company, who doesn't do anything except work.
High Fidelity
Rob Brooks, a female record store owner in the rapidly gentrified neighborhood of Crown Heights, Brooklyn revisit past relationships through music and pop culture, while trying to get over her one true love.
Like Flowers in Sand
Struggling to find success, a former wrestling prodigy finds himself ready to quit until he reencounters an old friend who reignites his passion.
Dynamite Kiss
A passionate fling in Jeju ends abruptly — until fate reunites an heir and a young woman when she joins his company, disguised as a married mother.
My Dearest Nemesis
Baek Su-jeong leads a planning team at a renowned department store. She meets her new boss, Ban Ju-yeon, her first love from an online game 16 years ago, stirring up memories of when he confessed his feelings but she rejected him.
Jealousy Incarnate
A weather girl reunites with her old crush, a haughty reporter at her TV station. But this time, she has her eyes on someone else -- his best friend.
Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-joo
A competitive swimmer crosses paths with his childhood friend, a rising weight lifting star, and realizes that she has a secret crush on his cousin.
Nice to Not Meet You
A hateful romance between a professional detective actor who wants to become a melodrama master and a female reporter who was demoted from a political reporter who won the Reporter of the Year award to the entertainment department.
Why These Shows Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Start-Up (2020): Drama and Comedy themes, similar pacing, and comparable production quality. NoBadPicks uses TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface series most likely to resonate with fans of Start-Up.
See full details for Start-Up (2020)