thai dramas about queer women & some recs (2025)

28 Feb, 2026

When I was in my lower secondary school years, I was introduced to the movie "Yes or No" by my sister. I watched it with her without any other family present, and it was an interesting experience...

Mainly due to the fact that it was (1) a romance between two women and (2) that the leads were of Thai descent. I don’t think I really processed how rare that was then until reflecting on it a few years after.

Note: This was released 16 years ago at this point so... it's definitely aged.

There wasn't much queer media with Asian leads (that I knew of) available, and especially ones that are actually based in these countries. I would definitely recommend the movie, albeit I am fairly sure it would be showing its age at this point¹.

In the past few years, I did watch a few other shows that included f-f (female and female romances) from the west. Some of the memorable ones include: Wynonna Earp, Person of Interest, Orphan Black, Warrior Nun, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and Motherland: Fort Salem. Most of these are, at this point, a few years old.

Although I admit that I’m no longer actively checking in on Tumblr to see what shows are trending, I do notice that there seems to be a lack of queer media focusing on women, and it appears to be primarily focused on the m/m (male and male romance) genre as of recent.

There could be many reasons for that, and I’m fine with them being around as I think every type of genre or pairing serves a different audience. I am disappointed that it seems like that's where the majority of the money is.

What surprised me at the end of 2024 was when our shared family Netflix account recommended a Thai GL (Girls’ Love) drama, The Secret of Us. I was curious and watched the trailer for it. And to my surprise, it was a fun queer watch! Though I would put a note here that I did have to get used to the comedic tone² of a large chunk of these dramas, as most of them seem to be very slapstick-y, overdramatized at times with a similar vibe of telenovelas. Not to say I don’t enjoy it, just that it took some time to attune to it.

Note: Not a bad one to start off with, but it’s definitely a ‘popcorn’ watch. Interestingly, this specific pairing (LingLing Kwong and Orm Kornnaphat Sethratanapong) has sort of risen to massive popularity with their own fan meetings (not just within Thailand either), concerts, ... and even having some governmental departments reference their latest show as a pairing.

Anyhow, I started looking into some of these Thai shows around mid this year as I was going through the workload from everything, and I was happy to discover that the Thai GL (and BL by a much larger scale) seems to be healthily growing and thriving in the past 2 years.

I’ve taken some time to watch some of the shows recommended around Tumblr and X², and I’m excited to share them here! Though I do think many of these dramas are reaching an audience beyond the Thai locals, I think most of them are still South East Asians or Asian (there’s a big base of Chinese fans and Brazilian fans, interestingly!), so hopefully this could be an interesting read to some of you guys from elsewhere.

1. Whale Store XOXO

My favourite watch from this year would be Whale Store. The plot follows Wan, an event planner who works in the city, who ends up losing her dad and in quick succession ended up inheriting her father’s small town grocery store. She decides to move back to the small town in the hopes of continuing her father’s legacy. Of course, she ends up meeting another girl, Maewnam, who works as a part-time professor at a nearby university and Maewnam being somewhat of a resident Ms. Fix It All/Bob the Builder of the town, she ends up aiding Wan in accommodating back into the small town life.

I really liked this one as it has a quality of quietness with minimal drama (as compared with some of the other shows), and Wan is trying hard to resuscitate her father's business, and the hurdles she goes through felt comforting despite it all. As someone from Southeast Asia, I could relate to the pressures and guilt she had for her father. The navigation with her relationship with Maewnam, as well as the success/failure of the grocery store, was very cute as well - it’s definitely not too heavy on sexual undertones (as other GLs often do, interestingly) and is more sweet and warm for the soul.

If you’re looking for a more chill watch, this one is a cozy, minimal drama one for sure.

2. Harmony Secret

This was a fun one! Two powerful women who are direct successors to their parents’ companies end up having to compete against each other in a bidding project, with both of them trying to outsmart one another and ending up falling in love. This is definitely more dramatic and is veering HARD on that telenovela vibe, but I liked the competition aspect of things.

I would say that it probably could’ve been better if it weren’t as short as it was (8 episodes) as there were definitely some plot points that could’ve been less rushed. Nonetheless, it was fun to follow along the journey.

3. Us The Series

Another slow and mostly quiet watch. We have a pretty simple plot: We have Dokrak, who works in a cafe and ends up crossing paths with a dental student, Pam, from a nearby university, and she ends up having a crush on her. Things turn for her when Dokrak’s brother asks her to help him court Pam by having Dokrak, who is talented at drawing, draw some doodles for her and offer them as his.

This one’s a family-focused drama (which I’ve noticed seems to be a common theme in many of these series ³), and I would say not too overcomplicated at that. This is a pretty slice-of-life one, similar in tone to Whale Store XOXO, albeit with slightly more drama.

This is definitely a gentle and slow watch, probably not one that you would binge over a few hours.

4. Love Design

This is probably the one I had the most fun watching! LD is charming in the sense that it doesn’t take itself too seriously, and it’s also pretty comedic compared to the rest in this list. We have Aokbab, who is an architect in charge of reviving her mother’s bankrupting architecture agency due to her two brother’s lack of entrepreneurial skills, and Rin, who is a younger, recently graduated architect who is very picky with her first job despite having a great portfolio.

This is a semi Enemies to Lovers in the sense that Aokbab had to beg Rin to join her company due to an urgent project that Rin could help tip the needle with, despite Aokbab resenting having to be in that position. The show progresses in a nice pace (especially after the first episode) throughout, and there’s a cute special episode as well that has the pair off in Japan.

I love the banter between the two MCs, and the show just felt very soulful in general. The cinematography for this one is also great, with some nice scenes at Japan in the first few episodes and sprinkled in between.

4. 23.5

The same pairing from Whale Store XOXO is also the central pairing here! In this one, Ongsa, a high school student, accidentally catfished her crush, Sun, and it puts her in awkward situations. The plot for this one is pretty simple, and it remains quite straightforward throughout the show, as the MCs are still in high school so I found this to be an easy watch as well.

I liked the representation in this one - we had two transgender teachers who had their own little enemies to lovers subplot, and Ongsa's cousin being on the spectrum and finding her own group of friends who care for her.

6. Pluto

This one’s definitely quite heavy on the drama side of things, but probably one of the more bingeable ones in this list. We have Ai-oon, who is the ‘blacksheep’ of her family - the less academically inclined twin and the more rebellious one. While her sister, Ob-oom, who is her opposite, ends up in a freak accident at the start of the show.

Right before the accident, Ob-oom had gotten married to a wealthy man and asked Ai-oon for a favour, and she wanted Ai-oon to 'help' break up with her ex-partner while pretending to be her, so she wouldn't have to do it herself. Ai-oon ends up deciding to do it reluctantly due to her sister’s condition. As you may expect, this spirals into a longer thing - Ai-oon meets the ex-partner, May, who is now blind due to a recent hate crime that was related to a case she had worked on earlier (she is a lawyer), and ends up catching feelings for her instead.

I liked this one a fair bit, though you have to turn off your logic sometimes, as it can get overtly dramatic, and the whole miscommunication/no communication trope that’s prominent in romance media is present here. The actresses in this one did a great job, though Ai-oon and Oa-boom were both played by the same person, and May was blind in 90% of the series, and it seemed natural, so kudos for that!

7. Clairebell

This is the newest GL I watched this year, and I caught up each Saturday for their new episodes! I think this one’s a new benchmark of how GLs don’t have to be too hyper-focused on the main pairing for it to be good.

We have Bell, a recent university graduate, who was framed as a drug user and sentenced to prison, and Claire, a woman who was convicted of murdering a teacher at a high school where Claire’s sister goes to. Claire is popular in the women’s prison for being notoriously violent, even named as a ‘Rabid Dog’ in the prison circles. However, Claire seems to be acting as a solo person in the prison, and the main ‘gang’ in charge was the three D sisters: Didi, Dao, and Deuan, who spearhead the illegal goods business in the prison.

Bell ends up being a target of one of the sisters, Didi, and eventually finds herself indirectly getting closer to Claire in hopes that Didi would evade due to Claire’s reputation. Which ended up being a great idea, as it worked!

I loved the main pairing for this one, but I also really, really enjoyed the side plots. We have the resident grandma prisoner, Pon⁴, who is revealed to be Claire’s only confidant, who also has been in prison for years, waiting for her son to visit her (which he never does). We learn about some of the circumstances of why she’s there, how she becomes close with Claire, and the failure of the prison system as well as corruption to appropriately care for elderlies. The 3D sisters, though they made me want to strangle them through the screen half the time, had surprisingly great character growth by the end of the series.

There are several other interwoven sideplots that I think carried the show well alongside the main pairing, and by the end of it, I was left with quite a satisfied feeling. It also helped that this one has a larger than usual budget for a Thai GL and definitely a more fleshed out script.

I’m happy to see that the Thai GL industry seems to be thriving, although there are definitely some things that I think can be improved⁵. Being a queer person in my 20s, seeing how much this space has grown, especially in the Asian space, has me feeling grateful for the internet, despite the many things it has made worse.

Although I do still think that it’s quite difficult to compare these Thai dramas 1-1 with some of the other American shows I’ve watched, I can say that it definitely does seem that the Thai production companies have learned that there is a profitable audience in doing GLs and BLs (see GMMTV’s and their long list of BLs and now slowly increasing GLs).

Let me know if you have any thoughts or if you perhaps have any recommendations of your own! I’ve watched a few others, but nothing stuck out to me as much as the ones listed here, so I will always appreciate any others :)

Thanks for reading through this post! I haven’t been feeling up to writing much these past few months, but I've always wanted to share a bit more on what I’ve been watching seeing I’ve stopped doing week notes. In fact, this was actually written a few weeks before the end of 2025, but I fell into a rut and took a pause from doing any personal writing altogether.

I'm slowly trying to get back into the routine, and I do miss the platform and looking through everyone's posts - hoping that I can share more in 2026!

#television