Photo: Weibo

Chinese romantic drama Find Yourself, tells the love story of senior college student Yuan Song and He Fanxing, the administrative director for the company where Yuan works as an intern. The series features Song Weilong as the college intern who falls in love with his boss, played by 33-year-old singer-actress Song Qian. 

The series has topped the most-watched scripted drama list while arousing heated online discussions.

Netizens have commented that the sweetness of the love stories has alleviated emotions stemmed from being quarantined at home since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. The drama made its debut two days before its scheduled release on Hunan Satellite TV on January 26.

The drama's first day garnered a high audience rating of 1.657 percent, finishing third place among all scripted dramas, according to data from verified blogger "Tvthings."

In 11 days, the drama was viewed for over 1.08 billion times on Mango TV, a Hunan Satellite TV streaming platform. The romantic drama's overwhelming viewership caused the website to crash Wednesday night. 

Netizen discussions about the drama have not only continued to trend on Weibo but have also found their way to Twitter, where fans have revealed plot points and uploaded photos. Find Yourself was picked up by Netflix to meet international audience demand.

The popularity of the leading actors has increased since the romantic drama's release. Scripted programs that debuted around the same time, such as the historical drama The Great Ruler, starring TFBOYS Wang Yuan and Forward Forever, starring Jackson Yee, are less popular even though both feature stars who are more popular than Song Weilong and Song Qian. 

However, Audience reviews dropped from 8/10 to 7.1 on Chinese review platform Douban on Thursday. Viewers voiced complaints about what they felt was an illogical storyline along with He's unrealistic portrayal for someone who is meant to be an experienced administrative director.