My Sibling's Romance

My Sibling's Romance is an original South Korean dating reality show that airs every Friday on JTBC and Wavve, an OTT service in Korea. Premiered on March 1, 2024. The show ranked first in the TV-OTT integrated non-drama category popularity ranking for three consecutive weeks from March 18 - March 25 and ranked first in the overall TV-OTT non-drama category for two consecutive weeks on March 18 - March 22 announced by Good Data Coorporation.

Format
My Sibling's Romance is a story about several siblings hiding each other's identities and gathering in one house while looking for their respective lovers. The format of the program is the same as other entertainment programs, where young handsome men and women come together to depict romance, but by filling the cast with siblings, it also deals with the friendship and family love between siblings. It is also has the format of mystery drama, in which the participants should guess the identity of the other's blood relatives. The siblings who appear in My Sibling's Romance pretend not to know who their siblings are. This is the first dating reality show to feature siblings. The siblings variable was also highly involved in the romance process because the sibling became cupids or villains of each other's romance. One of the panelist BamBam said that My Sibling's Romance has a sitcom like feels because of each sibling's chemistry, also has some throbbing feels because it contains a family story other than the main romance feels.

Concept and development
My Sibling's Romance was created by producer Lee Jin-ju (PD Lee) under JTBC. Lee had previously worked as an assistant director for various works with producer Na Yeong-seok at TvN, and created the TVING original series Transit Love after becoming independent. After moving from TVN to JTBC, she produced My Sibling's Romance, which is similar to her previous project, Transit Love. The investigation aspect of guessing whose sibling is whose is similar to Transit Love, but the contestants are family instead of ex-lovers.

In an interview, PD Lee shared that the team that worked on Transit Love gathered together and came up with several plans for their new show, but as they talked, they ended up coming back to the dating entertainment program style they excelled in. Lim Jeong-ah, the head of JTBC’s entertainment production division, also agreed that My Sibling's Romance family concept could appeal to a wider audience. At the production presentation in January, PD Lee shared that she had the idea of making a dating program with siblings because her friend worried about their brother, who appeared on a dating program. She thought the worrying feelings for family could become the fun interesting part of the show.

Filming
The first half of My Sibling's Romance was filmed in South Korea; from episode 10, they filmed in Singapore. During an interview, PD Lee mentioned that staff placed more than 100 cameras around the house in order to film the show. The production staff members also hid behind a one-way mirror to shoot the participants. The staff rarely faced the participants except during interviews or when setting the microphone.

Casting
PD Lee said that the casting of My Sibling's Romance required real relatives, but public auditions weren't able to be held because the new production idea was supposed to not be known in advance. The staff contacted around 1500 people through Instagram direct messaging; after deciding that the person was attractive, they revealed the show's concept, but many of those contacted did not have an opposite-sex sibling. Difficulties also came with casting the parents, as they had to appear in the show as well. Because of that, the siblings were not recruited with representativeness of 'normal family fantasy' in mind, but more of finding attractive people to recruit.

Critical reception
Pop culture critic Jeong Deok-hyeon said, "Dating and siblings may feel disparate, but in fact, the drama genre has dealt with a lot of family love," and added, "It appears that a lot of effort was put into recruiting performers with relationships that viewers can empathize with." He continued, "However, I expect that things will not go smoothly in the future," adding, "The strong family love shown in the beginning may lead to deep emotional conflict in the second half."

Public reception
After the first episode aired according to Wavve viewing data on March 4, 2024, My Sibing's Romance ranked first on the weekend new paid subscription attraction index to Wavve's entertainment genre in the first week of March, and it continued maintain its rank on the top for four consecutive weeks.

My Sibling's Romance also ranked fourth in the TV-OTT integrated non-drama category popularity ranking for the first week of March announced by Good Data Corporation on March 12, 2024. Then peaked at number one on March 18 and maintained its top rank for three consecutive weeks announced on Fundex (www.fundex.co.kr), the official platform of Good Data Corporation. In addition, My Sibling's Romance also ranked first in the overall TV-OTT non-drama category on March 18, and maintained its top rank for two consecutive weeks.

Panelist
List of the panelist:
 * Han Hye-jin
 * Code Kunst
 * BamBam
 * Miyeon
 * Jonathan Yiombi
 * Patricia Yiombi

Broadcast and release
My Sibling's Romance airs every Friday at 8:50 PM KST on JTBC and is exclusively pre-released 50 minutes earlier on Wavve. The first episode premiered on March 1, 2024. My Sibling's Romance release the full-version episode on Wavve first then the edited version of some scenes will be aired on JTBC because of the running time limit. The television version has points that whether young or adult viewers would find interesting like the participant's home videos and photos of their childhood.

For Global viewers, the show also airs on:
 * Hulu Japan in Japan
 * Viu, Asia's largest pan-regional OTT platform, in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa
 * friDay Video, iQIYI and Line TV in Taiwan
 * KOCOWA+ in the Americas, Europe and Oceania

Ratings
In the table below, the blue numbers represent the lowest ratings and the red numbers represent the highest ratings.