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Pierce Conran

Lead cast: Kim Hae-sook, Jung Ji-so, Jung Jin-young, Chae Won-bin
Latest Nielsen rating: 3.5 per cent
While all eyes may be on Squid Game season two, the Netflix smash hit is not the only reprise of a story masterminded by writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk to have returned to our screens in the final weeks of 2024.
Long before his confectionery-coloured death game phenomenon, Hwang scored a huge hit during the Lunar New Year holiday of 2014 with his fantasy comedy Miss Granny. The film inspired a slew of local-language remakes, with 10 films and series produced in Asia and North America to date.


A decade later, the story circles back to Korea with the television adaptation Who Is She. Jung Ji-so (The Cursed) and screen veteran Kim Hae-sook (Strong Girl Nam-soon) take over the role originally played by Shim Eun-kyung and Na Moon-hee.
Note the singular “role” – they both play Oh Mal-soon, an elderly woman who magically turns into her younger self one evening following a fight with her daughter.
Mal-soon (Kim) ran a noodle shop for decades to provide for her daughter Ban Ji-sook (Seo Young-hee) and now lives with her, her son-in-law Choi Min-seok (In Gyo-jin) and her granddaughter Choi Ha-na (Chae Won-bin).
She is a no-nonsense character who suffers no fools and, while she may be retired, she will be damned if the young men who take over her restaurant will mess up her treasured recipe.
Mal-soon gets on well with her son-in-law and especially with Ha-na, who she will happily visit a karaoke room with. She had her own aspirations to be a singer in her youth, but her vocal cords are not what they used to be.

The person in the house she does not get on with is her frosty daughter, who works an office job and seems to take no joy in her life.
One evening, an argument flares up over dinner when Ha-na announces that she wants to drop out of school to pursue her dream of becoming a singer. The fight escalates, and ends when Ji-sook drunkenly exclaims that she wishes her mother did not live with them, which prompts Mal-soon to storm out – only to be caught in the rain.
A taxi suspiciously rolls up offering a ride and immediately we are reminded of a similar magical device in the time travel fantasy My Perfect Stranger. She falls asleep in the car and wakes up in a photo studio run by the taxi driver.

She decides to have her funeral portrait taken and, once the camera shutter clicks, her body instantly de-ages 50 years. Mal-soon (now played by Jung Ji-so) may have her unblemished skin and young vocal cords back, but at heart she is still a 70-year-old woman.
Meanwhile, Jung Jin-young (Police University) appears as Daniel Han, a gifted K-pop producer who works as the executive producer of Eunice Entertainment. He is about to unveil a new girl group but, despite his young age, has decided that he will retire once the band has been unleashed on the world.
The trouble is, with little time remaining until the debut, one of the band members, Emily, suddenly disappears. Then he sees a picture of her pop up on social media and he goes to find her.
However, while the person he finds looks exactly like Emily, she is in fact Oh Doo-ri, the alias taken on by the rejuvenated Oh Mal-soon.
Up until now, Who Is She has followed the original story to a T. Here, however, we have the first major deviation.

In the original, Mal-soon met the producer through an audition, but the remake has added another fantastical layer, by introducing Emily and seemingly have them switch places. This, of course, means that Kim Hae-sook soon returns as the older Emily.
Kim has no trouble bringing Mal-soon to life, although her version of the character is a little more cantankerous than Na’s.
On the other hand, Jung Ji-so has her work cut out trying to fill the formidable shoes of Shim, an actress possessing a very special intensity and vulnerability that made her ideally suited to play the younger Mal-soon.

Jung makes a valiant effort, but with her heavily accented dialogue and elastic facial expressions, her portrayal of Mal-soon is more of a caricature of a senior citizen than an embodiment.
The story remains an engaging one, though, and Who Is She is, for the most part, a breezy watch.
Who Is She is streaming on Viu.


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While not as well acted as the original Miss Granny film by Squid Game’s Hwang Dong-hyuk, fantasy comedy Who Is She is an engaging watch


While not as well acted as the original Miss Granny film by Squid Game’s Hwang Dong-hyuk, fantasy comedy Who Is She is an engaging watch.
