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No. 2 Worldwide in Two Days
A prosecutor loses her memory, and a stranger shows up claiming to be her boyfriend. That’s the hook behind Netflix’s new series “This Terrible Love,” and it’s working — the show climbed to No. 2 on FlixPatrol’s global Netflix TV rankings just two days after its August 7 premiere.
By the August 10 count, the show had hit No. 1 in 18 countries — including Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Peru — and landed in the top 10 in 81 countries, according to reports. FlixPatrol’s daily rankings work differently from Netflix’s own weekly viewing-hours numbers, but landing across that many markets at once is a real early signal.
A Formula That Bets on Both Romance and Mystery
The show starts with elite prosecutor Go Eun-sae losing her memory and ending up living with boxing coach Jang Tae-ha. Played by Jung Hae-in, Tae-ha introduces himself as her boyfriend — but Ha-young’s Eun-sae has no memory to confirm it. Viewers follow the romance while wondering, right alongside her, what exactly Tae-ha is hiding.
That structure travels well. Amnesia, a fake — or suspicious — boyfriend, and a shared apartment are shortcuts that compress a relationship without requiring much cultural context, which is exactly what makes them easy entry points for viewers less familiar with Korean rom-com conventions. Mixing in the rough physicality of boxing and the tension of the case Tae-ha was chasing also keeps the show from slowing down whenever it leans too hard on sweetness.
A Controversy Around the Lead Actress
Separate from the show’s success, allegations about lead actress Ha-young’s great-grandfather’s alleged pro-Japanese collaboration surfaced online. Her agency, Bsisters Entertainment, confirmed on August 10 that her great-grandfather was indeed physician Ahn Sang-ho, but said the collaboration allegations were baseless. At this stage, the allegations shouldn’t be treated as established fact.
The controversy spread quickly, landing right in the middle of the show’s promotional push. Still, the show’s ranking kept climbing while the online debate over the actress’s family history intensified. It’s impossible to say for certain whether global viewers simply didn’t know about the controversy or knew and watched anyway — but either way, early global consumption clearly didn’t stop.
Why the Ranking Kept Climbing
A Netflix show’s ranking isn’t decided by opinion in a single country. Dozens of markets are working on the same day at once — recommendation algorithms, trailers, actor recognition, subtitles and dubbing, and social clips. Jung Hae-in’s existing overseas fanbase and shareable, bite-sized romance scenes both helped drive early viewership.
The all-at-once release format helped too. Once viewers get the setup from the first episode or two, binge-watching through to the finale concentrates viewing into a short window. And there’s an ironic effect at play: news coverage of the controversy kept repeating the show’s title, which may have driven curiosity of its own.
The Real Test Comes After Week One
A No. 2 global ranking after two days doesn’t guarantee long-term staying power. FlixPatrol’s rankings score a show’s position across country charts, while Netflix’s own weekly global Top 10 uses total viewing hours divided by runtime. Keeping the two metrics separate matters if you want to gauge how much staying power the show actually has.
What to watch next: the official weekly Top 10 numbers and the week-two ranking. Also worth watching is how the controversy settles after the agency’s statement, and whether word of mouth moves past “fun premise” into genuine praise for the show’s craft. The first two days showed a strong launch. Now it’s the show’s turn to hold onto that attention.
Source: Netflix official title information; FlixPatrol, August 10, 2026; JoyNews24 and iMBC Entertainment, August 10, 2026.
