A dying wish rarely comes with a script, which is exactly the problem facing the two strangers at the heart of Curtain Call, a 2022 South Korean drama about a role neither of them auditioned for.
What is Curtain Call about?
An elderly woman who left North Korea has little time left to live, and her one remaining wish is to see the grandson she has been separated from for decades. A theatre actor is brought in to play that role, stepping into a part written not for an audience but for a family that time and division pulled apart. What begins as a performance for hire becomes something the actor cannot simply walk away from once rehearsals end, as the boundary between playing a grandson and becoming one starts to blur. The series builds its drama less from plot twists than from the quiet discomfort of an actor learning a life that isn't his, and from an old woman choosing, knowingly or not, to accept a fiction because the alternative is dying without ever seeing her family again.
About the cast
Ha Ji-won and Kang Ha-neul lead the cast, with Goh Doo-shim, Sung Dong-il, Kwon Sang-woo, Noh Sang-hyun, Ji Seung-hyun, and Choi Dae-hoon in supporting roles, directed by Yoon Sang-ho.
Context & significance
Curtain Call premiered in 2022 in the drama and family genres, drawing on the division of the Korean peninsula as backdrop rather than plot mechanism. Stories built around families separated by that history remain a recurring thread in Korean television, and this series narrows the theme down to a single household and a single, deeply personal request rather than treating it as a broader historical account.
Watching Curtain Call on Ktime
Curtain Call is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, so Farsi-speaking audiences can follow its family story in their own language from the opening scene. The page itself is free to read; watching requires only logging into a K-Time account, on a platform built with a Farsi-first experience for Iranian viewers abroad.