Choi Chi-yeol (Jung) is an ilta, an abbreviation for “first-ranked star” and a word used to refer to popular private instructors – the Korean title of the show is Ilta Scandal.

Chi-yeol is the most sought after instructor in Seoul’s Gangnam neighbourhood, the most competitive schooling district in Korea, if not the world. He is hounded by besotted students at the end of each of his classes and even deals with stalkers.

One of his teenage stalkers follows him home one evening and barges into his flat. Someone takes a picture when he shoves her into a taxi outside, and by the time he wakes up the next morning, he’s caught up in an online scandal.

Chi-yeol is a brilliant instructor, with an easy way of imparting knowledge that includes comic and supportive asides. But outside the classroom he’s highly strung and terribly lonely. He has trouble sleeping and even keeping down food, and can be very prickly with his staff or anyone he meets over the course of his day.

Nam Haeng-seon (Jeon) used to be a handball player on the national team, but these days she’s the owner of a small store selling banchan (Korean side dishes), “mother” to Nam Hae-e (Roh Yoon-seo) – actually her niece – and brother to Nam Jae-woo (Oh Eui-sik), who is on the autism spectrum and needs to be taken care of because of a heart condition.

Chi-yeol has fame and fortune but leads an empty life, while Haeng-seon, despite her financial woes and the difficulty of raising her daughter and taking care of her brother, seems to have a more fulfilling life thanks to her sunny disposition.

The day the scandal breaks, Chi-yeol is in particularly bad humour and uncharacteristically cancels a class and gets treated in hospital. On his way out, Jae-woo, who is there becaues of his heart condition, snaps a picture of the tiger on Chi-yeol’s jacket.

Misunderstanding his intentions, Chi-yeol snatches his phone away and instinctively runs off when Haeng-seon makes a beeline for him. He manages to escape, but not before breaking Jae-woo’s phone. However, other forces conspire to bring them together again, and again, and again.

Hae-e isn’t meeting her full potential at school and, despite having been dead set against taking private classes, she finally recognises that she’s hit her limit and needs to enrol. She asks her mother to get her into Chi-yeol’s class, which several of her other classmates already attend.

Even before that happens, Chi-yeol is brought a healthy banchan meal by his assistant. He begrudgingly eats it and is reduced to tears as he wolfs down the meal and finally has a good night’s sleep. But it’s not just the quality of the food that soothes him, its taste has triggered some memories of a restaurant he used to frequent when he was studying to become a teacher.

The meal was from Haeong-seon’s shop and when Chi-yeol goes for a top-up, he is distressed to find her there. He tries to stay away at first, but his desire for a good sleep keeps pulling him back; before long, the pair constantly find themselves in each other’s hair.

After two episodes, Crash Course in Romance hasn’t offered much in the way of a story. Haeong-seon and Chi-yeol are about to become more regular fixtures in each other’s lives, but other than that the only ongoing mystery is to figure out who is flinging little metal pellets, first at Chi-yeol’s stalker and another through Haeng-seon’s store window while they’re both inside.

In the absence of a richer narrative, the show takes its time as it introduces us to its corner of Gangnam, populated by ambitious mothers and their student children, and to its main characters, most of whom are close to fully fleshed out very early in the series.

Given that the style is clean and unobtrusive and the screenplay is geared toward its characters, that leaves much of the heavy lifting in the hands of the cast. Jung is in comfortable territory as the aloof and overweening instructor, but unsurprisingly, it is Jeon who shines the most as she coolly portrays an ordinary woman making the most of her lot in life.

Crash Course in Romance is streaming on Netflix.