The debut series of romance mockumentary Lovestruck in the City (Netflix, two episodes weekly) weighs in with an absorbing helping of both as it follows the adventures in love – or lack thereof – boasted about, admitted to, invented or concealed by six young men and women (three of each) making their way in the big city. Not that the city limits represent any geographical constraints, especially for on-again, off-again couple Jae-won (Ji Chang-wook) and Eun-oh (Kim Ji-won), who do their frolicking and shacking up at the seaside. The trouble is, when real life rudely interrupts their dreamy fantasy and Seoul exercises its gravitational pull, Eun-oh disappears from Jae-won’s orbit by reverting to her true identity, leaving him flummoxed and angry. Neither knows that the other is one of the six subjects, meaning that when the penny drops they will eventually live happily ever after, or send in the hit squads. The Eun-oh and Jae-won tangle establishes a series motif: that the women are pragmatic and the men often self-doubting and soppy. The epitome of the tough, in-control woman is the unavoidably likeable school gym teacher, and surly serial dater, Sun-young (Han Ji-eun). Brutally direct, she leaves men in no doubt as to what she wants from them – then happily pulls the plug when she’s no longer interested. At the opposite end of the scale is grumpy, perennially disappointed novelist Geon (Ryu Kyung-soo), who has been out of the dating game for so long he’s “ready to put up with any type of woman”. Meanwhile, Kyeong-jun and Rin-yi (Kim Min-seok and So Joo-yeon) turn out to be an item – another disclosure in the steady drip-feed of revelations, sordid or otherwise, that keeps us invested in the fates of the lovestruck (or merely manipulative) six. The series’ device of having the subjects address the camera directly adds realism, honesty and inadvertent humour; taking a partner, on the other hand, seems to open the door to deceit and misdirection (except in the case of Sun-young). So is love really a many-splendoured thing? You be the judge. Amazon Prime’s El Cid – Game of Thrones without the wizardry Seasonal shenanigans and other year-end festivities may have kept certain televisual gems off the viewing radar, among them El Cid (Amazon Prime, season one now streaming). Revisiting the 11th century and the warring kingdoms of the country that would become Spain, this elaborately costumed swashbuckler comes with much buckle and swash, not least on the battlefield, where skulls are cracked and limbs hacked, and then in the bedchamber when all that clunky armour comes off. This is Game of Thrones without the wizardry. At the insistence of his wise, old, bad-tempered grandfather, young Ruy Díaz de Vivar (Jaime Lorente) goes from village to town to become squire (a sort of medieval knight’s PA, but one who carries lethal weapons) to Prince Sancho of León. Having discovered a plot to assassinate King Fernando, but finding himself in the tricky position of being unable to warn the monarch, Ruy realises that politics comes with age-old trust issues, especially when he must put crown before family. Nevertheless, his homeland is holding out for a hero; and resourceful, cunning, courageous Ruy morphs into the type of half-man, half-myth who has had to fight all his life for everything he has. He’s a meta-human who will, before the series ends, instil in his compadres the devotion to honour and justice that has never failed him. Through dint of his courage and savagery in battle he becomes El Cid (“the master”) himself. And even more than that, he grows up to be … Charlton Heston.