When Apple TV+ fans insist that the streaming service makes up for its small size with top-quality content, Pachinko is the kind of title that they’re referring to.
This multigenerational family drama, adapted from Min Jin Lee’s award-winning 2017 novel of the same name, is a spellbinding tour-de-force from show creator and writer Soo Hugh that delivers the kind of scale and production value you generally see in a feature film. It will break your heart into a million pieces, before putting the pieces back together again, slightly different from how they were before. And the newly released Season 2 trailer (below) underscores the best thing about Pachinko, which is the way it universalizes the immigrant story — and the importance of family, home, and identity.
Set against the backdrop of a dreamy cover of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida by Rosé of Blackpink, the trailer for Pachinko Season 2 (which hits Apple TV+ on Aug. 23) picks up with the story of family matriarch Sunja in 1945 Osaka. She’s forced to make dangerous decisions about her family’s survival during World War II, while her grandson Solomon explores a new beginning in 1989 Tokyo.
Regarding those different timelines, by the way, how those are handled is one of the many things that impressed me about the show. I’ve heard people say that Pachinko, the novel, was a little difficult to read because of the sprawling narrative that’s constantly bouncing around in time, but all I can say is that the Apple TV+ version moves seamlessly back and forth between the different characters and their places in time (you can see a version of that, in microcosm, in the trailer, when young Sunja steps forward and transforms into the elderly Sunja, played by Youn Yuh-Jung (the grandmother in Minari).
The cast overall is fantastic, and special mention should also be given to Anna Sawai, the star of FX’s Shogun, who seems to be everywhere these days (and who, of course, is always a commanding presence in everything she does). Minha Kim, meanwhile, was perfectly cast as young Sunja, playing her with the grace and delicate uncertainty of a young woman trying to find her place in the world.
Notwithstanding the Apple TV+ headlines over the past few days, about how the iPhone maker’s streaming service is going to start cutting back because so few people are apparently watching, all I know is this: Netflix doesn’t have anything that’s affected me to the degree that Pachinko has. I’ve said it before, but the scene from Season 1, in which Solomon dances in the rain to a cover of The Cure’s In Between Days, is when I went from being a fan of the show to evangelizing about it.
The title, by the way, refers to the pinball-like Japanese gambling game — and while Sunja’s family eventually turns pachinko into a source of livelihood, the game is also a metaphor for the randomness of life. About the slim chances of success, and about fighting to survive against overwhelming odds. I can’t say enough good things about this show.
\