More important than being successful is how you came by your success

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's Top 50 TV Shows of 2022.  

#15 : 이민진 (Pachinko)

Pachinko was such beautifully crafted TV that it should have been a criminal offence to watch it on a laptop. The sweeping adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s novel was bursting with drama across mixed timelines, following the strong-willed Sunja and the next generation of her family. She flees occupied Korea in 1915 after being wronged by a bad man she thought loved her. After starting a new life in hostile Japan, there are multiple romances, questions around identity and culture, and plentiful moments of high emotion. This was something very special. Plus, it wins the award for the best title sequence of the year.

I've heard this is good, but had absolutely no idea what it's about - but, unlike Yellowjackets, The Guardian does at least attempt to explain it.  Although I'm not sure it really gives me a great idea what to expect.

The first thing I have to own up to here is that it's taken me six months to watch this, which kinda suggests I found it hard going - and I both did and didn't. More on this later...

The second thing to say about it is that it is, above all things, absolutely beautiful.  Cinematic both visually and in its scope, it's quite the piece of work.  You really have to concentrate as we follow Sunja through three generations, skipping backwards and forwards in time with little regard for our safety.  In terms of the story, you probably don't need anything more that - but it's safe to say there is a LOT of story here, running from 1915 right up until 1989 and it really doesn't go easy on you in terms of explaining what's going on (although at least it does tell which year each scene takes place in).  There's also a lot of hardship involving journeys - people really have to earn their place in their new (or old) world in this.

It has some gorgeous period details - although, of course, I've no idea how accurate they are because my knowledge of occupied Korea is limited.  So limited in fact, that I had no idea that Japan had ever even occupied Korea.  Both Japanese and Korean are used in the film (and a smattering of English) and I like the sound of both of them to my uncultured ear - they just sound poetic to me.  But even when translated, there's a lot of poetry to the words here - I imagine the book is beautiful (and long!).

So why did it take me so long to watch it?.  It's not that it's a hard watch exactly but each episode is like a small film - it may only be an hour long but there's so much plot and imagery (and skipping backwards and forwards in time) in there you come out of each episode exhausted.  It's a very unbingeable series - you need to go away and take a break from it before you can start the next one.

It is well acted by a very large cast - plenty of whom I can barely remember by the time I got to the end of it.  Sunja is played by Yu-na as a child, Kim Min-ha as a young adult and Youn Yuh-jung as the family matriach, with the latter two having a lot of heavy lifting to do throughout the series.  Jin Ha as Solomon Baek, Sunja's grandson has the next most prominent role, experiencing a somewhat different journey at the other end of the timeline and he fulfils his role well.

I did enjoy it, but I found the time travel very confusing - particularly since it seemed to assume that you automatically knew who was who, even when roles were being played by different actors.  The subtitles helped greatly at times by explaining who was speaking - I think I'd have been completely lost with a dubbed version.  It was all very cleverly adapted, but I'm not sure it really helped - I'm assuming the book is more chronological and they were just trying to earn their money here.  I was also very confused by episode 7 - it was a stand-alone episode based on a character we hadn't seen much of for four episodes (and we didn't overly care about when we did see him).

And finally, two somewhat random points - I really wasn't expecting it to feature The Cure's "In Between Days" (it was very randomly spliced in).  I also must disagree with The Guardian on one point - Severance had a better title sequence (but Pachinko's is still pretty cool).

If you like your television to be beautiful, intelligent and epic (or maybe even epic-er than that) and you aren't put off by subtitles or confusing time jumps then this is well worth a watch.  Alternatively, if you just like something that's beautiful to look at and don't mind not having a clue what's going on, then you'll still be doing well with this - it's available to watch on Apple TV+.  I'm also interested to know how much of the book makes up this first season - there are quite a few characters that we have no idea what happens/happened to them, so I suspect there's going to be at least a second season.

#13 - Odd and confusing, but not necessarily bad
#16 - My first outright rejection