Twinkling Watermelon (2023) Review: Meeting Dad as a Teen

Is Twinkling Watermelon worth watching?

Yes. Twinkling Watermelon is one of the most tender Korean dramas of 2023, a time-slip story that uses its fantasy to let a son see his parents as young people with their own dreams. Its portrayal of Deaf family life and of a CODA (child of Deaf adults) is unusually thoughtful, and the 1995 band scenes give it real bounce. The main reservation is length: across 16 episodes the story takes on more romantic tangles and mysteries than it needs, and the middle stretch loses some momentum.

What is Twinkling Watermelon about?

Ha Eun-gyeol (Ryeoun) is the hearing son in a Deaf family. He signed before he could speak, and he has spent his life acting as the household’s interpreter, a role that has made him dutiful, capable and quietly exhausted. He is also a model student with a private love of music that he has not dared to take seriously.

A strange music shop sends him back to 1995, where he meets his own father, Ha Yi-chan (Choi Hyun-wook), as a rebellious teenager, and finds himself pulled into the school band that shapes both of their lives. Seol In-ah and Shin Eun-soo play two young women at the heart of that year.

Twinkling Watermelon was written by Jin Soo-wan and made in South Korea, in Korean and Korean Sign Language. It aired on tvN and streams internationally on Viki. This review covers the complete series, one season of 16 episodes, and the story is finished.

A time-travel story about parents as strangers

Plenty of dramas send a character back in time to fix something. Twinkling Watermelon is more interested in what it means to meet your parent before he was your parent. Eun-gyeol arrives knowing who Yi-chan will become, and much of the show’s emotional charge comes from watching him hold that knowledge while the teenage Yi-chan swaggers about, entirely unaware of the future.

That setup lets the series explore inheritance in the widest sense: talents, silences, unfinished wishes. It asks what children owe their families and what families owe them back, and it does so without sentimentalising either side. The present-day scenes of Eun-gyeol as his family’s voice give the time-travel plot real weight, because the audience understands what he is carrying before he ever leaves.

Sign language written into the storytelling

The show treats Deaf characters and sign language as part of its texture rather than a novelty. Signed conversations are staged with care, and the drama repeatedly shows how a hearing world forces Deaf families to rely on children like Eun-gyeol, without making the parents objects of pity. It is also alert to the particular loneliness of a CODA, fluent in two worlds and fully at home in neither.

Ryeoun is excellent in the lead, playing a young man more comfortable being useful than being happy, and he lets the 1995 adventure loosen him up by degrees. Choi Hyun-wook is a delight as the young Yi-chan, all bravado and bad decisions, and the pair’s growing friendship is the emotional spine of the series.

Band scenes with real joy, and too many threads

When the drama simply lets its teenagers rehearse, bicker and play, it sings. The music is central rather than decorative, and the mid-1990s setting is lovingly rendered. Where it falters is in plotting: the time-travel mechanics grow more complicated than they need to be, and the romantic crossings among the young cast sometimes crowd out the father-son story that makes the show special. A tighter 12 episodes might have been stronger still.

Who should watch Twinkling Watermelon?

It suits viewers who enjoy family dramas with a fantasy twist, coming-of-age stories built around music, and time travel handled with heart rather than hard rules. The commitment is a single 16-episode season. Content is gentle overall, with teenage romance, family conflict and themes of disability and discrimination, though it will make many viewers cry.

Three good companions:

• Twenty-Five Twenty-One for another late-1990s Korean youth story with friendship and ambition at its core.
• When Life Gives You Tangerines for a generational family drama that asks similar questions about parents and children.
• Goblin for fantasy romance with a strong streak of melancholy.

The verdict

Twinkling Watermelon takes a familiar time-slip premise and turns it into a warm, perceptive drama about family, music and the parents we never knew as teenagers. It sprawls in its middle episodes, but its lead performances and its thoughtful depiction of Deaf family life make it a deeply rewarding watch.

Rating: 4.5/5