For Tony, who asked for this.
Many such reclists exist already but here is mine, extremely subjective and biased towards my own personal tastes and standards which if you're reading this you're probably already on board with at least a little bit!
The thing you have to keep in mind is BL as a genre got noticeably better very quickly, like within the past year, so shows that came out before 2021 tend to have more... Issues, than shows released more recently. I still like a lot of older stuff but I recommend it with more reservations than newer stuff.
RIVALS! RIVALS! RIVALS!
Pat and Pran have been raised from birth to compete with each other: their parents hate each other and are business rivals and they live next door to each other. They end up at the same college studying Engineering and Architecture respectively, and their majors also hate each other. So of course they've been in love with each other their whole lives and are now finally realizing it as they have to keep their friendship a secret from their college friends and parents. Also, side lesbians!!
Honestly if this is your first BL you may be spoiled forever because this is the pinnacle of the genre, the best thing GMMTV has ever released, extremely solid script made even better by some incredible actors. However, because it's so dang good and easily accessible, it's blown up a lot recently (much to my delight) and it's likely you've already seen it and want more recommendations! 12 episodes of about 30-40 minutes each. Can be found on Youtube.
I made a whole dreamwidth post about this show here. Very clean and elegant direction, very layered and interesting characters. Protag Taekyung is so cute and not annoying! Love this for him! Watch this if you think love triangles are fun, and love watching an isolated character make friends. Very short. K-dramas are like, hour-long episodes, but KBLs are like 15 minute episodes. This one has 16 episodes. Can be found on Viki or you know where.
HEIGHT DIFFERENCE! Upperclassman-underclassman! Vaguely remniscent of Kurotsuki! Game design! Jang Jaeyoung is prevented from graduating college by tattletale freshman Chu Sangwoo and decides to get revenge by annoying him to death...except Sangwoo needs a designer to help make his video game come to life and this guy is the best designer in school. They do the thing together and fall in love and it's great. Iconic bisexual best friend character also. 8 episodes, can be found on Viki or you know where.
THIS IS ACTUALLY STILL AIRING SO IF IT ENDS UP SUCKING I WILL REMOVE IT but so far it's been like a show I would make if I could make shows.
Win's best friend Korn gets a significant inheritance in Win's dad's will. Win decides Korn was pretending to be friends to get that inheritance and is angry forever. Win and his sister Lin get into a car crash and swap bodies! Now Win and Korn must go on a quest throughout all of rural Thailand to get all the magic holy water they need to switch Win and Lin's bodies back. I love banter and bodyswapping and roadtrips and the lead actor pair, Earth(Korn) and Mix (Win) have fantastic chemistry, a thing we already knew from...
So in Thai BL if two actors work together well as romantic leads and don't hate the experience, they'll be marketed as a ship together and do more shows together as fictional couples. EarthMix got Cupid's Last Wish partly because Tale of 1000 Stars was a very ambitious project that did extremely well. It's a very romantic story adapted from a novel, in which Tian (Mix) gets a heart transplant and, feeling guilt over the death of the woman whose heart he got, picks up her job as a volunteer teacher in a very remote village, where he falls in love w/the local army commander Phupha (Earth). Gorgeous, gorgeous scenery, solid plot and characterization, good chemistry between leads. *holds up Earth* I just think he's neat. And speaking of Earth...
So the first BL I saw Earth in was Theory of Love, in which he played the side character Un who also got a BL subplot (which I actually ended up rooting for more than the main couple, not with Mix but with another actor named White). Theory of Love is what I keep describing to people as "film school AU iwaoi if Iwaizumi cried a lot." Third is in love with his womanizer best friend Khai, but just when he decides to get over Khai, Khai starts liking him back! The caveat to this one is Khai is such a jerk it is hard to root for them for uh. A lot of the show. I really like Gun as Third and I really liked the core friend group dynamic here, especially Two who is an extremely supportive bestie for Third. Also the film school stuff was fun! On Youtube, as are 1000 stars and Cupid's Last Wish.
For the first 5 episodes of this show I was like "why is this happening and where is this going" and then the last 6 episodes I was like "oh this is actually really good." Also film school, also pretty boys, no long-term pining but lots of pretty scenes. Interesting family dynamics. The first 5 episodes made me put this show in this category instead of higher up, because I could not understand why the love interest (Da-un) was at all interested in the surly, not-reciprocating-at-all protagonist (Si-won). 11 episodes, can be found on IQ.
The BL is Top Tier but the not-BL plot is What Are You Doing. Lead couple Maxtul work together a lot and are close friends IRL (and publicly advocate for LGBT rights!) so their chemistry is off the charts incredible, I love seeing them together and I wish they would be together in better shows. Manner of Death is a gritty murder mystery where Bun(Tul) is a medical examiner at a provincial hospital in the town he grew up in when his childhood friend Jane turns up dead in a murder meant to look like a suicide, and her boyfriend Tan(Max) is the prime suspect. The actual development and resolution to this mystery is kinda stupid, but if you like your BL with some tooth to it and are sick of high school and college students, this is a show for you. 14 episodes, can be watched on WeTV.
Speaking of grit...
Off and Gun (Khai and Third from Theory of Love) return to BL for possibly the final time as the leads in this show about... college activists/vigilantes? It's based on a K-pop RPF fanfiction. Not even a novel that started as fic, a straight-up fic. But okay so Gun plays the estranged identical twins White and Black, and Black was beaten up so badly he's in a coma so White is tasked with pretending to be his brother who he hasn't seen in years to figure out who did that to Black, and in the process of infiltrating his brother's friend group ends up falling in love w/Sean (Off). B-plot is an art student and a cop/underground graffiti artist fall in love. The art the student does is actually pretty good. I feel like anyone involved in real activism would find this kind of cringe/laughable hence its placement in this section of my list, but if you turn your brain off it's fun and there's exciting things like parkour and smoke bombs and arson and stuff. I really enjoy OffGun and especially Gun acting two very different roles is so cool to see. He has such range! 14 episodes, on Youtube.
Codifier of a lot of the big tropes of Thai BL (university setting, engineering department, senior-underclassman dynamic, Pink Milk For Some Reason) but also came out before budgets got bigger and LGBT sensitivity was more of a concern (so you have characters saying things like I'm not gay I just like this guy specifically). Kungpob is a freshman in the Engineering department who keeps being sassy at Arthit, the upperclassman and head hazer of the Engineering freshman-orientation-thing-that-they-do. It's not as extreme as I expected it to be from the word hazing but still kind of excessive sometimes. I like the banter and I think Arthit is very funny, but I desperately wish this show had better color grading because everyone looks vaguely greenish indoors. Watch if you want to understand The History of Thai BL better or enjoy banter and belligerent sexual tension (like age-reversed kurotsuki a bit). My first Thai BL, atctually.
15 episodes, was on Netflix is now on Youtube. Also has spinoff/sequels I did not watch.
Best viewed after at least Theory of Love and also SOTUS so you can get a sense of the scene it's referencing/parodying, Lovely Writer is about a writer pressured into writing a Y-novel (Thai M/M romance genre) and then falling in love w/the lead actor of the live action adaptation of this novel who is also secretly his childhood friend apparently. Watch if you love meta self-aware genre fiction. Do not watch if over-the-top obnoxious sound effects annoy you. The het side couple in this show is honestly incredibly well done. Writer Gene's assistant Hin has Love Live merch in his room which I hate that I recognized instantly. I liked Gene but thought the actor boy Nubsib was kind of annoying. But I really love meta-commentary media, so. 12 episodes, on Youtube.
I don't like the side couple but I love the main couple. The premise is really stupid (if you're a virgin at 30 you gain the ability to read minds until you have sex) but god do they make it WORK. Protag Adachi is introduced from his point of view as a boring nothing average man and then, when you can hear what Kurosawa thinks of him, you get to see how awesome Kurosawa thinks Adachi is for all these things Adachi doesn't realize are cool about himself, and it's really cute. I like that a lot. 12 episodes, on Crunchyroll for some reason. Based on a manga I haven't read yet.