KBS’s time-slip romantic comedy, Manhole: Feel So Good, is performing poorly in terms of television ratings and has posted the lowest drama episode rating to date since January this year. According to Nielsen Korea, the third episode of the drama which aired on Wednesday night obtained 2.2 % in nationwide viewership ratings and lost to Man Who Dies To Live and Reunited Worlds by 10.6 and 4.6 percentage points, respectively.

Manhole: Feel So Good premiered last week with 3.1 % in nationwide ratings, a figure that dropped by 0.3 percentage point to 2.8 % in the second episode. This week saw an even higher drop as the rating of the drama’s latest episode is the lowest ever among Korean dramas that have aired on free-to-air networks since the beginning of 2017, indicating that only a very small portion of the domestic audience cared to follow its story. The biggest audience share goes to MBC’s Man Who Dies To Live which continues to be popular among the viewers and achieved its second highest rating in last night’s episode, at 12.8 %. SBS’s Reunited Worlds, meanwhile, barely improves in ratings but has maintained its records within the 6.0-7.5 % range.

This recent development in Manhole‘s viewership rating performance puts KBS in a bad spot. A ranking of 2017 dramas based on their lowest rated episodes reveals that four out of the top five dramas belong to the network. The Best Hit, also a time-slip drama that aired on the Friday-Saturday slot, comes in second in the ranking as shown below while the ongoing Strongest Deliveryman, its predecessor, tied with Perfect Wife for the third spot. MBC’s Missing Nine round out the top 5.

Manhole Feel So Good (KBS) – 2.2 % (episode 3)

The Best Hit (KBS) – 2.3 % (episode 17)

Strongest Deliveryman (KBS) – 3.5 % (episode 1)

Perfect Wife (KBS) – 3.5 % (episodes 5 & 7)

Missing Nine (MBC) – 3.6 % (episode 14)

Manhole: Feel So Good marks Kim Jae-joong‘s (Spy) return to the small screen following his discharge from the mandatory military service in December last year. He plays an unemployed man named Bong Pil who travels through time between the present and the past to stop the wedding of his longtime crush, played by Uee (Night Light).

Note: All nationwide viewership rating values used in this article are based on publicly available data from Nielsen Korea.