You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, and you shoudn’t judge a TV show by its opening credits. But the title sequence for Pachinko — in which its multi-generational cast dance joyously, all flailing limbs and sliding feet, to the rollicking Let’s Live For Today by The Grass Roots, beneath the brilliant lights of a pachinko arcade — is so good that it could only introduce something spectacular.
It proves to be the case, and emphatically so. An eight-part adaptation of the internationally best-selling novel of the same name by Korean-American author Min Jin Lee, this Apple TV+ show is, like the 490-page book, epic in its scale — and enrapturing in its execution. It traces the fate of a Korean family across more than 70 years of the 20th century, flitting between timelines, traversing multiple countries, speaking Korean, Japanese and English, and employing various actors to play the same characters at different ages. In less delicate hands, it would be unwieldy; here, though, it emerges as one sublime portrait of both a family and a people.
