Overview
It doesn't matter what the weather holds for Suzie Sakamoto: with her husband and son missing when Apple TV+'s Sunny begins, the series' titular term can't apply to her days. An American in Kyoto (Rashida Jones, Silo), she's filled with grief over the potential loss of her Japanese family, anxiously awaiting any news that her spouse Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima, Drive My Car) and their boy Zen (debutant Fares Belkheir) might've survived a plane crash. She'd prefer to do nothing except sit at home in case word comes; however, that's not considered to be mourning in the right way according to custom and also isn't appeasing her mother-in-law (Judy Ongg, Kaseifu no Mitazono). When Suzie soon has a robot for company, an unexpected gift from Masa, dwelling in her sorrow doesn't appear to be what he'd want in his absence, either.
In this ten-part series, which adapts Colin O'Sullivan's 2018 novel The Dark Manual for the small screen and starts streaming from Wednesday, July 10, 2024, the technology that's quickly immersed in Suzie's existence is a homebot. The artificial-intelligence domestic helpers are everywhere in this near-future vision of Japan, aiding their humans with chores, organising tasks and plenty more — everywhere other than the Sakamoto house with its firmly anti-robot perspective, that is. Amid asking why her husband has not only sent the eponymous Sunny her way, but also why it's customised specifically to her, questions unsurprisingly spring about his true line of work. Has Suzie been married to a secret roboticist, rather than someone who designs refrigerators? What link does his job have with his disappearance? How does someone cope in such an already-traumatic situation when the person that they're possibly grieving mightn't be who they've said they are?
Often with a science fiction twist, Apple TV+ can't get enough of mysteries. Approaching five years since the platform launched in late 2019, that truth is as engrained as the service's fondness for big-name talent, including across Severance, The Big Door Prize, Hello Tomorrow!, Silo, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Constellation, Sugar and Dark Matter. Thankfully, there's no content-factory feel to this lineup of shows, or to the streamer's catalogue in general, which is one of the best on offer in the online fight for eyeballs. Sunny's closest equivalent hails from beyond the brand, bringing Charlie Brooker's Channel 4-started, now Netflix-made Black Mirror to mind, but even then it's far more interested in its characters than their relationship to technology. That said, that people and how they use tech remain the real enemy, not gadgets and advancements themselves, hums at the core of both series.
Indeed, Sunny proposes a radical path forward for Suzie, especially at a time IRL when generative AI has been making its presence known, and rarely for the better. Creator, showrunner and executive producer Katie Robbins (The Affair) takes her human protagonist down a route where the program's namesake, which matches a WALL-E vibe and emoji-leaning face with the cheerful voice of Barry, I Love That for You, Quarantine and Emma Approved's Joanna Sotomura, is perhaps the only thing that can be trusted. There's no shortage of other flesh-and-blood characters around Suzie, with some kindly and others patently nefarious. Bartender Mixxy (singer/songwriter Annie the Clumsy, Miss Osaka) falls into the first category. The platinum-blonde Hime (You, 9 Border), who seems to have a history with Masa, sits in the second camp. But with her world constantly being turned upside down and her usual confidante in Masa gone, technophobe Suzie might only be able to put her faith in the machine that's now ceaselessly by her side.
A show such as Sunny, which is a comedy, drama, thriller and slice of dystopia all in one — alongside an odd-couple buddy pairing, plus a series with multiple puzzles, a stack of technology-driven and existential questions, and a probing of the human condition — needs two things beyond its compelling narrative. If viewers couldn't feel the confidence infused in this delicate mix of components, the show would crumble like circuitry haphazardly jammed together. If audiences couldn't sense the ambition to do far more than join dots as well, Sunny would similarly fail to compute. Not just thanks to its penchant for cliffhangers, this is a mystery with more always on the way, and one that adores teasing out its intricacies in a lived-in world that no other series can call home. That's assurance. That's initiative. Diving in is like strolling through Tokyo: there's always a new lane to mosey down, whether in the pursuit of solving the storyline or unpacking Suzie.
The Dark Manual of O'Sullivan's moniker pops up as a hacker guide to customising homebots. Here, the plot also thickens. Still, as the yakuza feature, flashbacks tease out Suzie and Masa's meet-cute, the latter's time as a hikikomori — the portion of the Japanese population who choose to actively withdraw from society — is weaved in and surveillance is ever-present, Sunny never lets the avalanche of developments and threads that keep fuelling its tale become its sole or even main attraction. As penned by a seven-strong writing team led by Robbins with backgrounds on Bunheads, The Staircase, Apples Never Fall, Hit-Monkey, Tiny Beautiful Things and more, this is gripping and addictive viewing. It's a show to sleuth along with. Its retrofuturistic look and Saul Bass-esque opening credits are worth returning for again and again. Nonetheless, Sunny wouldn't connect if didn't value the personal and the human angle of being cast adrift from everything that you relied upon with no certainty about where to turn.
Aided by being played by Jones, who so expertly married optimism and cynicism as Parks and Recreation's Ann Perkins — as she had to as the midpoint between Leslie Knope and Chris Traeger versus Ron Swanson and April Ludgate — Suzie is a character of unflagging determination crashing against mourning and anguish. She yearns with hope, as everyone does, for a lost loved one to re-emerge. She couches everything, including that longing, in sarcasm. That she journeyed to Japan to escape past woes, her lack of friends beyond her family and her alienation by refusing to learn the language all help construct a complex portrait. Also assisting: even simple moments, like swigging wine on the toilet. It isn't a secret that bounding through chaos is more relatable when the external tangle that greets a character reflects their inner jumble, as Jones anchors at the heart of her performance. The Boston Public, The Office, Celeste & Jesse Forever, Angie Tribeca and On the Rocks star in never-better territory, in fact, as she must've spotted the potential for; she's also among Sunny's executive producers.
New TV arrivals of mid-2024 are now two for two when robot companions are involved. Fantasmas is the other. They're also two for two in world-building and production design that plunges viewers into screen spaces that resemble nothing else, which is no small feat for Sunny with Japan as its setting. Another commonality: not merely making audiences grateful that the non-stop flow of new streaming series can keep delivering programs this unique, but sparking a hunger for more to come. That's the sunny side of more TV begetting more TV and then more still, because a heaving crowd is always made up of individuals. Few new streaming arrivals of late are as distinctive as Fantasmas and Sunny, though.
Check out the trailer for Sunny below:
Sunny streams via Apple TV+ from Wednesday, July 10, 2024.