There's a pre-emptive clenching at the beginning of Mad For Each Other that comes from a history of watching Korean dramas. Its treatment of mental illness is historically woeful and romances involving those with mental health issues tends to involve either predatory relationships between therapists and their patients or the Great Healing Power of Love whereby finding your destined one is a miracle cure.

It makes it even more astonishing, more powerful and more welcome that Korea has made Mad For Each Other: a story about two traumatised people trying to navigate their way back into the world and into a relationship with each other.

Jung Woo plays Noh Hwi-oh, a cop with an anger management problem on suspension. His neighbour and partner in therapy is Lee Min-kyung (Oh Yeon-seo) who is suffering from paranoia, OCD and other post-traumatic symptoms after coming out of a violent relationship.

Mad For Each Other is written and structured more like a classic American sitcom than a kdrama. It episodes are a short 30 minutes and the scenes are short, snappy and the camera never lingers or settles. And yet, while it's a fast paced situational dramedy, the writing has genuine pathos, heart and depth. It's a tragi-comedy that treats all its characters with respect and empathy and never opts for a cliche. Its treatment of mental illness is never trite and, while exaggerated, never farcical.

The production values are high, the acting is excellent and the show never makes its damaged characters the butt of its jokes.

And while I would love to be awarding it the 10/10 it almost attained, the final episode couldn't help itself in opting for some unnecessary action to resolve what should have been resolved with the more subtle character-driven plotting it had until the end. But for being almost perfect, I highly recommend this show.