Best Short Format Shows of 2021

Ghost hunting teen shaman navigating her first relationship. It's not a novel plot but Kim Sae Ron and Nam De Reum are lovely together and there's decent enough action fighting an evil ghost bent on killing whichever student ends up as the lowest ranked student at a highly competitive high school.

It's more of an anthology of three stories with episodes 1-2 and 6-7 being fairly run of the mill high school first love material. But episodes 3-5 are enchanting. Jo Yoo Jung convinces her athlete best guy friend to pretend to date her and, from there, it's pretty standard stuff plot wise. But Joo Yoo Jung explodes off the screen again and again. Episode 5 of this series is one of the finest in all of K Drama Land for 2021. 

There's a pretty steep drop to here. Honestly, the characters here are all over the place and it takes a more than healthy suspension of disbelief to watch. An influencer that isn't who she appears to be is consistently threatened by those who know her true identity. Hard to root for any character here and there's some super unrealistic character development, but there's definitely a lot happening plotwise to keep the tension amped up.

Super light fluff stuff with a by-the-numbers workplace romance helped out by a surprisingly well done performance by SF9's Zuho. The primary selling point though is Im Na Young doing what she does best - be sweet and nice and as cute as anyone in the biz right now.

Frankly, this would likely have been bumped out of the top five if "Part Time Melo" didn't faceplant itself by putting six episodes on YouTube and the remaining six somewhere in what seems to be an entirely unreachable corner of the internet. 

"Bite Sisters" is, storywise, a total mess. But it has Kang Ha Na playing the lead role. That's essentially the sole selling point. But it's Kang Ha Na so even if what she's doing or saying doesn't make a ton of sense (and it doesn't), she's as charismatic simply standing still as all but a few other actors exerting themselves to their fullest effort.