He Was Sold Into A Marriage He Never Wanted, Then Fell For His Brother-In-Law. Meet “Bittersweet Love”
Every so often a boys’ love drama comes along that has everyone clearing their schedule, and right now it’s Bittersweet Love. The Chinese BL series has hooked slow-burn fans this month, and the premise is pure heartache.
Lu Xiaofan, a gentle young man from a poor rural family, is effectively sold into a marriage with the wealthy Bei dynasty in Beijing after the family needs a quiet, agreeable husband to protect its reputation.
He expects a soft life. He gets a mansion full of snobbery and cold shoulders.
The real love story is not the marriage. It’s the slow burn between Lu Xiaofan (Guan Yue) and his brother-in-law, Bei Luqing (Yan Ruihao), a reserved, hard-to-read man who says more with a glance than a full sentence.
Wary distance turns into something neither can quite admit, with family pressure and class lines stacked against them.
The series is adapted from Che Ye Liu Xiang’s danmei novel The Man Who Married into a Prominent Family, so book fans already know where the ache is heading.
If class divides, a forced marriage and two men falling for each other against the odds are your comfort zone, this is your next binge.
When do new episodes drop, and where can you watch?
Bittersweet Love premiered on 3 July with its first three episodes at once, and it runs to a 12-episode finale on 21 August. New instalments stream on Viki, with GagaOOLala, Heavenly and True Visions Now also carrying the show, plus YouTube in some regions.
Each episode runs about 30 minutes. Most drops land on a Friday, though episodes six and eight sneak out the next day on the Saturday.
