The First Frost is certainly a great success for an urban romance drama. Using first day of broadcast as measurement, it is the most popular drama on the Youku network since 2024. It is also the one with the fastest rising popularity on Youku since last year. There was a 200% increase in the downloads on Youku just within 3 days of its release. It is reported that the total broadcast volume of the drama up to the end of February 2025 exceeded 500 million.
Apart from Youku, you can also find The First Frost being shown on Netflix. And again, it seems to have broken records where Chinese dramas are concerned. While the global daily charts tend to be dominated by Korean dramas, The First Frost has managed to sneak in to reach the top 6 which is the highest for mainland dramas to date on the network. It has also topped the Netflix charts in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.
It is indeed a surprise to see such popularity for what seems like a typical idol romance drama. Perhaps the story touches the core of viewers’ emotions due to the protagonists’ struggles which mirror real life rather than the standard fare of domineering CEOs for a romance drama. They are just like you and me in a large city with each putting up a defense mechanism to protect ourselves from being hurt. The drama setting gives us the feeling that life is harsh but there is always love to make up for it.
If you have watched The First Frost, what do you think contributes to its huge success?
.
Leave a Reply