9 Romance Shows Better Than ‘Off Campus’

Published Nov 5, 2026, 3:52 PM EST Jiminna Shillingford is an avid reader and a passionate storyteller. She is obsessed with all things TV, from anime and romantic fantasy to action-packed series. With that deep affection, Jiminna longs to share her excitement with all her readers through the Collider platform as a TV author. Through her writing she has created stories and blog posts of amazing book recommendations, showcasing her love of writing. Jiminna's goal is to inspire others to discover and embrace their love of stories in all of its forms. Romance television has always been one of the most beloved genres on TV — one that offers a plethora of swoon-worthy stories filled with passionate relationships, heartbreaking betrayals, and complicated emotional journeys. Among the finest of the genre is the recently released book-to-screen adaptation Off Campus. The Prime Video series is truly masterful with its delivery of a genuinely entertaining college romance filled with all the favored tropes, but even with how great it is, there are quite a few series that stand as simply better. Romance shows like the masterpiece that is Outlander, which delivers quite the sweeping historical tale that would leave any viewer weak at the knees, and the complex experience that is the underrated fantasy gem, Interview with the Vampire, which explores a much darker side of love, are just two in the extended list of shows that demonstrate how exceptional romance can become when love is explored beyond the first dregs of a new relationship. Compiled on this list are nine such shows, romance watches that not only stand out for their believable chemistry, excellent writing, and unforgettable characters, but also effortlessly outrank even a new icon like Off Campus. 1 'Semantic Error' (2022) Image Via Viki Though this series is a romance anime, it has many similarities to a show like Off Campus and enough differences that it makes it an even more satisfying watch in comparison to the live-action college romance. Semantic Error follows two university students who are complete opposites, as they turn an academic disagreement into an unexpectedly thrilling romance. As entertaining as Off Campus is, with its portrayal of tantalizing attraction between two college students from different social circles, Semantic Error’s appeal lies in how it delivers a clash of personalities that becomes increasingly romantic as the relationship evolves. The show’s power lies in its efficiency. With its short length and peak chemistry between its characters, Semantic Error offers a genuinely captivating romance without drawn-out storytelling or unnecessary complications, making it a fantastic addition to its genre that arguably surpasses Off Campus in how it seamlessly develops its core relationship. 2 'My Lady Jane' (2024) Image via Prime Video My Lady Jane is one of the most underrated romance series out there, having its potential squashed by being canceled after only one season. The fantasy adventure centers around the life of Lady Jane Grey (Emily Bader), who lives in an aggressively irreverent alternate version of Tudor England, changing a well-known, tragic chapter of history into an incredibly unpredictable story involving arranged marriages, magical transformations, and political schemes. My Lady Jane is a captivating watch that stands as a great viewing experience for lovers of fantasy and romance. It’s a heady combination of witty dialogue, romantic heat, and tons of fantasy elements. For viewers who were enamored by the contrasting personalities and the romantic tension in Off Campus, but also desire something with a touch more imagination and wonder, My Lady Jane is the way to go. The series may be short due to its cancellation, but it stands as a worthy pick for any romance lover’s watch list. 3 'Outlander' (2014–2026) Image via Starz This romance drama is definitely one of the greatest masterpieces to ever hit the genre. Outlander focuses on former combat nurse living in 1945, Claire Randall (Caitríona Balfe). While on vacation with her husband in Scotland, she mysteriously finds herself thrown back in time. There she is immediately entangled in burdensome politics and a budding love that tempts her away from the future she initially wanted to get back to. Outlander is the kind of series one begins and has great trouble not succumbing to a weekend-long binge. It's swoon-inducing, romantic, action-filled, and is touched with elements of both sci-fi and fantasy tropes. Outlander is an incredibly ambitious watch, but what truly dubs it as a series that surpasses Off Campus is that the show gives its romance a truly epic scale without ever losing any tactile details that make the passionate tale believable. The sports college romance no doubt excels at the excitement of a brand-new relationship, but Outlander outshines the series because it dramatizes what happens when passion has grown into a true partnership. Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Romance Is Your Favorite? Harry & Sally · Love & Basketball · Heated Rivalry · Titanic Four great love stories, and four completely different ideas of what love actually is. One is a friendship that took twelve years to admit itself. One is two people who refuse to stop competing. One happens entirely behind closed doors. And one lasts five days and never stops mattering. Eight questions decide which one is really yours. 🍂Harry & Sally(1989) 🏀Love & Basketball(2000) 🏒Heated Rivalry(HBO Max) 🚢Titanic(1997) FIND YOUR ROMANCE → 01 How does your love story start? The first scene tells you what kind of story this is going to be. AWe are friends for years before either of us says anything. BWe want the same thing and neither of us backs down. CNobody can know, including our closest friends. DOne look across a room and everything changes. NEXT QUESTION → 02 What do the two of you keep arguing about? Every great romance has one fight it has over and over. AWhether this is actually happening, and what to call it. BWhose career comes first this year. CWhether we will ever be honest about this in public. DNothing small. When we fight, it is about everything. NEXT QUESTION → 03 How do you show somebody that you love them? Grand gestures are easy to write. This is the harder question. AI remember every single thing they have told me. BI show up to the things that matter to them. CI keep their secrets like they are my own. DI would give up something enormous for them. NEXT QUESTION → 04 What is actually standing in the way? There is always something. Which something tells you the genre. ATiming. We keep finding each other at the wrong moment. BAmbition. We both want big lives and they do not match. CThe world. It is not safe to be open about this yet. DEverybody around us has decided this cannot happen. NEXT QUESTION → 05 Which romantic moment gets you every single time? Be honest. There is one that works on you and you know which. ASomebody running across a city to say it before midnight. BSomebody in the stands who stayed until the very end. CA look across a crowded room that nobody else catches. DSomebody promising to hold on, and meaning it. NEXT QUESTION → 06 What would you actually risk for the right person? Every romance asks this. Most people find out far too late. AA friendship I could never get back. BThe plan I have had for my life since I was a kid. CMy privacy. All of it would become public. DEverything. I would not think about it for long. NEXT QUESTION → 07 Where are the two of you in ten years? Some love stories are about the meeting. Some are about the staying. AStill talking. We have never run out of things to say. BBuilding something together, both of us still ambitious. CFinally open about it, after years of being careful. DApart, and I still think about it constantly. NEXT QUESTION → 08 Which of these sounds most like something you would say? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your romance. AI would rather talk to you than anybody else, forever. BI am not giving up either of us. We find a way to have both. CThis is mine, and I am not explaining it to anyone. DI would do the whole thing again, even knowing how it ends. REVEAL MY ROMANCE → Roll The Credits Your Romance Is…Four love stories, four completely different ideas of what it means to be somebody's person. This is the one that matches how you actually fall, and what it would ask of you. Harry & SallyYou do not fall for strangers. You fall for the person you have already been talking to for years, which is the slowest and by some distance the most durable way anybody has found to do this. When Harry Met Sally made the case that the best romance is an argument you enjoy, conducted over a decade, by two people refusing to admit what is happening. You want to be known rather than swept away. Somebody who remembers your worst story is doing better work than anybody arriving with flowers. The film is unusually honest about timing. These two are wrong for each other repeatedly until suddenly they are not, and neither of them engineered it. You would still be talking about everything at eighty. That is the entire promise. Love & BasketballYou want a partner, not an audience. Somebody who wants their own life as badly as you want yours, and who would never ask you to be smaller to make the relationship easier. This is the rare romance where both people have a real career and the film takes both of them equally seriously. You would rather be pushed than protected. The right person for you is also a bit of a rival, and that never entirely goes away. It understands the actual problem in ambitious relationships. Not whether you love each other, but whose turn it is this year. You would still be competing at forty. That is how you would know it was working. Heated RivalryThe intensity was never the problem. The secrecy is. You are drawn to a love that lives entirely in private, and to the particular ache of wanting somebody you are not supposed to want. Heated Rivalry runs on the oldest engine in romance: two people on opposite sides, meeting in secret, getting far more attached than either of them planned. You keep your private life genuinely private, and something in you finds hidden things more real than public ones. The tension is not only between the two of them. It is between what they have and what it would cost either one to say it out loud. Years of this, and the whole story is really about whether either of them will finally stop hiding. TitanicYou do not do this cautiously. When it happens for you it is immediate and total and it rearranges everything, and you would not accept a smaller version of it. Titanic gave us the biggest romance in film history and then made it last about five days, which is precisely the point of it. You measure love by intensity rather than duration. A few days of the real thing beats decades of something merely comfortable. The film is not only about the romance. It is about a woman who went on to live an enormous life afterwards because of it. You would still be telling this story at a hundred years old, and telling it exactly the same way. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 4 'Crash Landing on You' (2019–2020) Image via tvN Crash Landing on You is a well-done K-drama that delivers an extraordinary romance by placing its love interests in situations that make their relationship feel genuinely impossible. The Netflix drama centers on wealthy South Korean businesswoman Yoon Se-ri (Son Ye-jin), whose paragliding accident carries her into North Korea, where she’s discovered by army officer Ri Jeong-hyeok (Hyun Bin). Crash Landing on You is an extremely well-crafted masterpiece in the romance genre. The series makes most scenes count, as even the tiniest of romantic gestures hold an unusual amount of weight. Crash Landing on You also expertly surrounds its romance with comedy, suspense, danger, and tender, heartfelt moments, offering audiences a captivating love story that feels just as emotionally rewarding as it is thrilling. From incredible chemistry and unforgettable characters to the show’s ability to balance seemingly impossible circumstances with genuine affection, Crash Landing on You stands as a perfect masterpiece that outshines Off Campus in both storytelling and emotional depth. 5 'Fleabag' (2016–2019) Image via BBC One This woefully underrated Prime Video drama is far from the traditional, everyday romance series; in fact, it's one of the most brilliant explorations of attraction, emotional vulnerability, and loneliness to ever make it onto screens. Fleabag follows a grieving woman as she navigates her loss, self-destructive behavior, and complicated relationships in London. Fleabag is not only a fantastically entertaining series, but it's also one that brilliantly develops its romantic storyline within a much larger examination of personal growth. It’s an incredibly watchable series for anyone who appreciates the stunning romantic chemistry in Off Campus. But where Fleabag outclasses the college romance the most is in its ability to deliver sharper writing and a far more emotionally complex exploration of love and overall human relationships, marking it as an extremely romantic series with tons of depth. 6 'One Day' (2024) Image via Netflix One Day is a horribly overlooked romance miniseries that delivers a truly memorable story, one that evokes incredible cries of joy and devastation alike. The series follows best friends Emma Morley (Ambika Mod) and Dexter Mayhew (Leo Woodall) as their relationship evolves and devolves over the course of their friendship as the show revisits them on July 15 in successive years. One Day is a harsh reminder that time waits for no one. It’s an incredibly deep romance watch that is one of the most overlooked series to hit Netflix’s romance catalog. One Day is actually pretty far off from the trope-driven watches like Off Campus, making it a series that doesn’t rely on escalating relationships and immediate chemistry. Rather, it's a winding masterpiece that is not only frustrating and heart-wrenching, but also extremely heartwarming and swoon-worthy. 7 'Heated Rivalry' (2025–Present) Image via Crave This incredibly spicy romance is definitely one for the books. Heated Rivalry centers on two professional hockey players, Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) and Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams), whose intense rivalry transforms into something much more complicated and far more passionate. Heated Rivalry is a modern romance staple that quickly took over the world with its passionate protagonists who wield insane amounts of chemistry. With both Heated Rivalry and Off Campus being hockey romances, the lingering similarities are quite obvious, but the queer enemies-to-lovers drama defiantly wins because it allows the sports world to act as a genuine emotional obstacle rather than merely an attractive setting. From the chemistry between its male leads to the series' emotional core that can cause devastating feelings, Heated Rivalry rightfully outpaces Off Campus. 8 'Interview with the Vampire' (2022–Present) Image via AMC Interview with the Vampire is a horribly underrated supernatural fantasy that deserves far more attention than it has received since its debut. Based on Anne Rice's novels, the series centers around Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) as he recounts his transformation into a vampire and his intense relationship with his maker and lover, Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid). Interview with the Vampire is the kind of romance that locks its viewers in and refuses to let go. Though it’s a sadly overlooked masterpiece most have yet to come across, in terms of tantalizing chemistry, emotional complexity, and insanely passionate storytelling, the series easily stands as the superior watch. Interview with the Vampire is a masterful exploration of love, obsession, heartbreak, and desire, a romance that is far from easy to experience but one that stands as truly unforgettable. 9 'Normal People' (2020) Image via Hulu This Hulu series is simply not spoken about enough in conversations about the greatest TV romances. Normal People follows Marianne Sheridan (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell Waldron (Paul Mescal) as their relationship with each other, and themselves, evolves from secondary school into university and early adulthood. Normal People is a genuine art piece in the romance genre — a hard but fantastically brilliant watch that touches on raw emotions and ensures its audience relates as closely as possible to its incredible characters. Normal People doesn’t rely on exaggerated romantic conflicts; instead, the masterful drama focuses on two young people whose feelings are complicated by their difficulty expressing themselves and their circumstances. It’s a fantastic series that outranks Off Campus because it feels exceptionally human, a show that is genuinely perfect for those seeking a romance with greater emotional complexity and realism.