Cover ‘Affinity’ has the kind of C-drama premise that sounds ridiculous until you realise you’ve watched a dozen episodes in one sitting (Photo: Viu)
‘Affinity’ has the kind of C-drama premise that sounds ridiculous until you realise you’ve watched a dozen episodes in one sitting (Photo: Viu)
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‘Affinity’ turns sci-fi, suspense and obsessive romance into one gloriously strange binge. Here’s why you cannot stop watching this 2026 C-drama—and what to watch next if you’re hooked
You likely watched Pursuit of Jade because you saw everyone else watching it. After all, the Tian Xiwei and Zhang Linghe starrer seems tailored to appeal to the C-drama-watching crowd. That’s all well and good, but then some C-dramas seem to have been engineered specifically to make you ask, “Wait, what exactly am I watching?”
Affinity belongs firmly in the second category.
The 2026 Chinese drama, starring Fang Jin and Cui Yuxin, is a sci-fi romance with a premise that sounds increasingly unhinged the more you explain it: a mysterious virus, genetically driven attraction, a dangerous man with a violent past and a heroine who may not have complete control over the feelings pulling her toward him. Set against a futuristic world of bioengineering and secrets, it keeps romance, mystery and psychological suspense running on the same track.
Oh, by the way, there is also the small matter of the male lead disguising himself as a cold, restrained medical professor and methodically attempting to make the female fall in love with him.
Somehow, it works.
If you’re looking for hard science, airtight logic or a romance in which everyone makes sensible choices, Affinity may not be your ideal evening. But if the words “genetic attraction,” “dangerous professor” and “obsessive romance” have somehow made you more interested rather than less, congratulations: you have found your C-drama.
Why it’s fun: ‘Affinity’ is a romance novel written by a sci-fi thriller
Above Weird, yes, but ‘Affinity’ is proof that you can throw in all sorts of genres and make the final result fun
The easiest way to understand the appeal of Affinity is to stop asking whether its premise sounds plausible.
It does not.
The better question is whether the premise gives the show somewhere interesting to go—and it does. The drama takes one of romance’s oldest questions, “Why am I so attracted to this person?”, and gives it an aggressively 2026 answer: possibly your genes.
Wu Nongyu (Fang Jin) is a bioengineering student living in 2051 when she develops an inexplicable attraction to Xie Xinxu (Cui Yuxin), a man whose own history makes him a particularly questionable candidate for a soulmate. The more she learns about him, the more complicated that attraction becomes, particularly as the story begins revealing connections involving genetic engineering, a mysterious virus and events that stretch beyond their immediate relationship.
This is where Affinity gets clever about its own ridiculousness. The science-fiction premise isn’t merely wallpaper for a romance. It creates the central romantic problem. If your attraction to someone can be explained by biology, can you trust it? If you know that something has chemically or genetically influenced your feelings, does that make them less real? And if the person you’re drawn to may be dangerous, how much should you trust an attraction you didn’t entirely choose?
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Those are surprisingly juicy questions for a drama that can, at other moments, feel like it has been assembled from the contents of a particularly chaotic C-drama trope generator.
It also helps that the show knows how to move. Affinity runs for 40 episodes of roughly 18 to 20 minutes each, which makes it much easier to surrender to its increasingly elaborate mythology.
You don’t have to commit your entire weekend to find out what happens next. You just have to watch one more episode. And then, one more.
Why is ‘Affinity’ so addictive?
Part of it is the format. At roughly 18 minutes per episode, Affinity rarely has enough time to become complacent. It introduces a question, complicates it and gives you just enough information to make the next episode feel necessary.
Part of it is the central relationship. Fang Jin and Cui Yuxin are playing characters whose attraction is itself a mystery, which means every romantic development carries a second question underneath it: is this love, biology, manipulation—or some combination of all three?
And then there is Xie Xinxu, whose presence gives the show its particular flavour of danger. He is not simply the cold male lead waiting to be softened by love. The story repeatedly makes you question what he wants, what he knows and how much of what happens between the two characters is actually under their control.
At first, you want to know why they are attracted to each other. Then you want to know what Xie Xinxu is hiding. Then you want to understand the science. Then the future starts mattering. Eventually, you are watching because you need to know whether these two people can actually choose for themselves.
9 C-dramas like ‘Affinity’ to add to your watchlist
If the appeal of Affinity is less “perfect romance” and more “how on earth did someone come up with this?”, there are several C-dramas worth putting next in the queue. The closest matches aren’t necessarily romances with the same plot; they’re shows that share Affinity’s willingness to make romance the engine for something stranger—parallel worlds, time loops, murder investigations, supernatural rules or psychologically complicated relationships.
See more: 10 best short C-dramas for people who think Chinese dramas are too long
1. ‘Derailment’ (2023)
Above For when the sci-fi mystery is what hooked you—and you want romance with a side of existential identity crisis
If the science-fiction mystery is what pulled you into Affinity, start here. Derailment follows Jiang Xiaoyuan (Liu Haocun), a wealthy young woman who wakes up in a parallel world where she has none of the money or social status she once had. She turns to a mysterious man, Qi Lian (Lin Yi), as she tries to figure out what happened to her and, eventually, who she really is.
The connection to Affinity isn’t simply the futuristic machinery. Both dramas use a speculative premise to make romance more complicated. Derailment is considerably more grounded and patient, but that makes it a good follow-up if you want the mystery to do more of the heavy lifting.
2. ‘Reset’ (2022)
Above For the one-more-episode impulse: a time-loop thriller where every tiny detail could be the clue that breaks the cycle
Affinity viewers who find themselves particularly susceptible to one-more-episode plotting should proceed directly to Reset. The thriller traps Li Shiqing (Zhao Jinmai) and a fellow passenger, Xiao Heyun (Bai Jingting), in a time loop after a bus explosion. Every attempt to prevent the disaster reveals another piece of the mystery.
It is one of those rare dramas where the repetition is actually the point: once you understand the rules, every seemingly insignificant detail becomes suspicious. That makes it especially satisfying if what you loved about Affinity was the feeling that the story was continually withholding one more explanation.
3. ‘Shining for One Thing’ (2022)
Above For when you want the impossible premise but would prefer your romance to hurt beautifully rather than terrify you
This is the choice for viewers who liked the romance wrapped around a speculative mystery more than the darker material.
When Lin Beixing (Zhang Jianing) finds herself repeatedly transported back to her high-school years, she gets another chance to revisit the choices that brought her to a miserable adulthood. Her journey gradually becomes entangled with Zhang Wansen (Qu Chuxiao), a boy whose fate she may be able to change.
It is softer than Affinity, but it shares one of that drama’s most effective tricks: using an impossible premise to make romantic decisions feel consequential.
If the futuristic science of Affinity mattered less to you than its fascination with fate, attraction and the possibility of finding each other against impossible odds, this is the more romantic watch to pick next.
4. ‘Love Me If You Dare’ (2015)
Above For viewers who came for the dangerous attraction and stayed for the emotionally constipated genius with questionable hobbies
Now we’re getting into the dangerous-man portion of the Affinity experience.
In this 2015 crime romance, criminal psychologist Bo Jinyan (Wallace Huo) recruits translator Jian Yao (Sandra Ma) to help him investigate violent cases. He is brilliant, arrogant, emotionally difficult and considerably more comfortable analysing human behaviour than participating in normal human interaction. Together they become involved in increasingly disturbing investigations.
There is obviously no genetically coded attraction here, but the tonal connection is strong: romance is inseparable from danger. Affinity asks what happens when attraction itself becomes frightening; Love Me If You Dare ponders what happens when the person you’re attracted to might be the most unsettling person in the room.
5. ‘Someday or One Day’ (2019)
Above For when what you really want is a romance that makes you question time, identity, memory and whether some people are just destined to find each other
Taiwanese drama Someday or One Day begins with Huang Yuxuan (Alice Ke) grieving the disappearance of the man she loves. A mysterious cassette tape eventually sends her into a strange temporal loop in which she inhabits the body of a woman who looks exactly like her.
What follows is part romance, part mystery and part identity puzzle, with the emotional stakes becoming increasingly difficult to separate from the mechanics of the story.
It is much more emotionally grounded than Affinity, but it shares the same fundamental proposition: what if the person you love exists somewhere the rules of ordinary reality cannot quite reach? If Affinity is the chaotic sugar rush, this is the beautifully constructed meal afterwards.
6. ‘Love Between Fairy and Devil’ (2022)
Above For the ‘I do not care if the science makes sense, just give me chemistry and spectacle’ crowd
Love Between Fairy and Devil pairs an innocent orchid fairy, Xiao Lan Hua (Yu Shuxin), with the fearsome Moon Supreme, Dongfang Qingcang (Dylan Wang). A magical accident links their bodies and emotions, creating a relationship neither can simply walk away from.
Its conceptual connection to Affinity is surprisingly strong. In both dramas, something beyond the characters’ conscious control forces two people into intimate proximity. The difference is that Love Between Fairy and Devil turns the mechanism into xianxia fantasy and comedy rather than genetic science and psychological suspense.
7. ‘My Lethal Man’ (2023)
Above For when you want your romance served with secret identities, revenge plots and a male lead who seems like a terrible idea from the start
If the dangerous male lead plus identity mystery is your favourite part of Affinity, this is a pulpier next step.
An unexpected kidnapping leads art student Shen Manning (Li Mozhi) to discover her wealthy doppelgänger, Zhuang Xinyan. When Xinyan dies in an accident, the powerful and enigmatic Yan Xingcheng (Fan Zhixin) forces Manning to assume Xinyan’s identity as his fiancée to protect a family legacy and solve a 17-year-old mystery.
It doesn’t have Affinity’s science-fiction concept, but it belongs to the same gloriously heightened corner of Chinese romance storytelling where love, danger and extremely suspicious circumstances are allowed to occupy the same room.
8. ‘I Am Nobody’ (2023)
Above For anyone whose reaction to ‘Affinity’ was simply: ‘Great. Now give me something even weirder’
And for anyone whose response to Affinity was essentially “Give me the weird stuff”, there is I Am Nobody.
The 2023 modern wuxia fantasy series follows Zhang Chulan (Peng Yuchang), an apparently ordinary young man who becomes entangled in a hidden world of supernatural martial artists after his grandfather’s death. The series mixes action, comedy, occult mythology and a surprisingly expansive supernatural universe.
Like Affinity, I Am Nobody starts with one genre, then keeps opening doors until you’re somewhere completely different.
9. ‘The Heart of Genius’ (2022)
Above For viewers who want more science fiction, alternate realities and big emotional questions without giving up the family drama
Finally, if the science and speculative ideas are what you want more of, The Heart of Genius is worth a look.
This drama follows Lin Zhaoxi (Zhang Zifeng) and her brilliant father, Lin Zhaosheng (Lei Jiayin). Dual parallel universes (Strawberry World and Cheese World) force the former to confront her relationship with mathematics, memory and lost potential. It’s not dark romance in the Affinity sense, but it shares the thing that makes Affinity so much fun: the theoretical premise isn’t just decoration. It changes the emotional stakes.
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Sasha Lim Uy Mariposa is a lifestyle journalist who is known for her food writing. Based in Manila and currently a marketing content specialist, she still dabbles in entertainment, beauty and dining coverage. She was the former managing editor of Esquire Philippines and was the food editor at SPOT.ph. She also edited several best-selling books about food.
She now writes for the different Tatler Asia markets as a contributing writer for T-Labs.
