Currently watching: Muri na Renai

Wow, now I've got some work again, I'm reminded that having a job that involves working with just one spreadsheet really sucks the life out of you. Plus, there's an unreliable commute there and back. On the plus side, I can now empathise with the plight of salarymen in J-dramas a lot more than I could before.

Having said that, there are no salarymen in this series from 2008. The story is that a young-at-heart (but old-in-truth) music executive starts thinking about a serious relationship. Meanwhile, a part-time waitress/actress faces a dilemma with her useless but adorable boyfriend. By coincidence (and it wouldn't be a romantic comedy without them) the music exec becomes friends with both of them, and he falls in love with her, but gives advice to him, and then worries about it afterwards.

I'm three episodes in, and it's good but not great. Natsukawa Yui is great as the female lead role, and Sakai Masaaki (the lead actor in Monkey, who I wrote about recently) is fine as the juvenile sixty year old man. However, if the dialogue is nicely written, the story itself creaks and groans with chance meetings and unlikely coincidences.

Perhaps I'm being over-critical. It is, after all, the first romantic comedy I've seen since watching Kekkon Dekinai Otoko so it has a lot to live up to. Judged against any other romance that involves people thinking it may all be too late, it's pretty good. Certainly, the "August/November" romance of an elderly man and a middle aged woman is a different twist to the usual type.

So if you watch this show after almost any other series, then you'll be impressed. If you see it after Saigo Kara Nibanme no Koi or Kekkon Dekinai Otoko, it might not seem so great. But I realise I'm being unfair, and I'll see this one out to the end with pleasure.