Love is often a marathon … but sometimes it’s a sprint, making it the perfect after-training pursuit for a group of South Korea’s feted young track stars in Run On (Netflix, series one now streaming, new episodes weekly). Ki Seon-gyeom (Im Si-wan), not yet the best athlete of the bunch but clearly the chosen one for narrative purposes, is all beat-the-stopwatch drive and focus when he has his running shoes on. Away from the stadium, however, he’s as serene as a Zen master levitating over a millpond, while his future love interest, Oh Mi-joo (Shin Se-kyung), inadvertently ends up a flustered grouch every time she meets him. Not that she knows who he is: his achievements have eluded her and it takes an electronic billboard of monster proportions for her to cotton on to his fame. When the pesky butterflies of romance aren’t fluttering, Mi-joo is a talented interpreter and translator of film scripts for foreign audiences, single-mindedly chasing the big-movie opportunities she knows her skills should be bringing in. Barring her way, though, is her resentful former professor, who has the power and contacts to humiliate Mi-joo by forcing her to take a temporary job with an agency representing sports stars. And – surprise, surprise – she finds herself interpreting for Seon-gyeom. Contrived? You bet, but this is a romcom drama, after all. What it isn’t is one-way, point-scoring traffic: Mi-joo makes the most of the misogynistic professor’s mortification when his toupee flies off mid-drunken diatribe. The rich, scheming and entitled echelons of society can’t see past their odiousness and despite the best efforts of publicity-junkie managers and stylists, some athletes just can’t be bought, or dazzled by flattery and excess. Would that were true of the real world. Pennyworth returns for a second punch-packing season Violence on the streets, alleged subversives imprisoned without trial, extrajudicial torture, troops mobilised, emergency legislation … yes, it’s Britain in an alternative 1960s. Now into its second punch-packing series, superhero-origin-story Pennyworth (Mondays at 9pm on Warner TV) tells the story of how titular hero Alfred Pennyworth (Jack Bannon) eventually ends up as butler to Gotham’s golden boy, Batman. The Alfred herein, ex-SAS and quick of sardonic wit, is an action man in his own right. Demobbed from the army, he goes from soldier to security consultant by forming an only sometimes above board company to take on the gangs of the London underworld. And his cover for that part of his identity? A bouncer in a Soho strip club who, to be fair, does the dinner-jacket uniform proud by going on to run his own establishment. Skew a familiar landscape just slightly and it becomes sinister – a feeling promoted in the first series and embellished here. Even the show’s penchant for musical, personal and architectural anachronisms chimes with its images of confusion and collapse; and as society breaks down a very British civil war seeps in, overseen by a cynical CIA backing both sides for its own benefit. The Raven Society (fascists) and the No-Name League (slightly less dictatorial) have their own stars of the twisted show, notably the chillingly intimidating, accidental Raven acolyte Bet Sykes, depicted by Paloma Faith in a Manchester monotone flat enough to make murder sound mundane. A more down-to-earth sociopath you couldn’t, and wouldn’t, wish to meet. As the country disintegrates our hero (never letting his Michael Caine accent slip) continues to plan his escape to America. Home, however, goes on dangling its compensations – not least a saucy young queen (Jessica Ellerby) who regards Alfred as her bit of royal rough. Alternate reality, or House of Windsor forecast tweaked and scripted with the benefit of hindsight? For more great stories on Korean entertainment, artist profiles and the latest news, visit K-post, SCMP's K-pop hub .