Hae-young’s view on life is evident to all around her from a young age.
The show opens back in her childhood; while playing dodgeball in her schoolyard she begins badgering her physical education teacher. She wonders why the girls are only allowed to play dodgeball in a small corner of the yard when the boys can use the full run of the pitch to play football.
In the present, her frustrations have only grown. We meet Hae-young again as she arrives at a colleague’s wedding and considers how much money to place in the customary wedding envelope.
To another colleague, she quips that she has filled such envelopes with enough money by now to buy a small car, and has yet to receive anything in return.
Hae-young, whose name in Korean is a pun meaning zero damage (son-hae young), is infuriated to learn that married staff at her company receive substantial benefits, including bonus pay and extra holidays.
Fed up with this, she decides to get a piece for herself with her boldest calculation yet: engaging in a quick fake marriage to land a promotion.
Also factoring into her decision is the fact that the groom of the wedding she has just attended is Ahn Woo-jae (Go Wook, Business Proposal), an ex with whom she broke up just six months earlier.
She learns that the new couple had been seeing each other for a year before tying the knot, and realises that he was two-timing her. This, on top of Ahn’s marriage benefits at work, sends her over the edge.
Not one to dilly-dally, she gives herself a month to walk down the aisle, and the role of bridegroom winds up falling to Ji-wook, the long-time cashier at Hae-young’s local convenience store.
Hae-young’s tit-for-tat approach to life didn’t emerge out of nowhere. She grew up with a single mother who gave herself to others tirelessly by constantly welcoming foster children into their home but wound up neglecting her daughter in the process.
Intriguingly, Lee and Han have signed up to appear in a planned spin-off series, Spice Up Our Love. This series takes its title from the web novel Han’s character is writing during No Gain No Love, and will see the actors bringing its pages to life as the leads of the novel – a CEO and his dietitian.
Shin and Kim are separated by 12 years and, while the age difference of their characters is vaguely alluded to, it does not appear to be a focal point of the story.
Whether there is enough to gain from investing in No Gain No Love will be up to individual viewers, but there is no denying that it is an attractive vehicle for Shin that treads a well-worn path with panache.
No Gain No Love is streaming on Amazon Prime.