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- Apple TV+
- Mar 25, 2022
- Apple TV+
- Mar 25, 2022
- Apple TV+
- Mar 25, 2022
- Apple TV+
- Mar 25, 2022
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Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 29 Critic Reviews
87
86% Positive
25 Reviews
25 Reviews
14% Mixed
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
Based on 29 Critic Reviews
87
86% Positive
25 Reviews
25 Reviews
14% Mixed
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Life’s rich pageant is present and correct in Pachinko and it’s magnificent. A strong shout for the most satisfying TV of the year so far.
A a masterfully crafted, beautifully photographed, magnificently acted and profoundly resonant piece of work you’ll never forget.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 72 User Ratings
7.8
74% Positive
53 Ratings
53 Ratings
14% Mixed
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
13% Negative
9 Ratings
9 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 72 User Ratings
7.8
74% Positive
53 Ratings
53 Ratings
14% Mixed
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
13% Negative
9 Ratings
9 Ratings
Fantastic show. Every scene is filmed to perfection. It packs everything , from judgmental societal shaming, generational conflicts, beloved parents who die too soon, resentful colonized victims, heartless and greedy business tycoons, but most of all it brings boundless human complexity to its characters. It does, at times, fall victim to melodramatic cliches but they're easy to overlook as the show takes every opportunity to dig deeper into the human condition. Beautiful show.
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SEASON 1
“Pachinko” is a groundbreaking, stunning, Asian-led production. Easily one of the best-looking narratives on Apple TV, the series weaves a meticulously wrought tapestry woven from the fabric of a scattered history.
The show is at once an educational, sweeping saga (about culture, history, politics, romance, and lineage), and a pointed story about its protagonist, Sunja, and her loved ones at various times in their lives. As such, it’s brimming with ideas, and conveys them really well.
Pachinko is technically impressive on all levels — it’s visually stunning, with a knockout score by Nico Muhl. The show is also gorgeous to look at in in each era it covers. ... But early and often, Pachinko makes clear that where our people come from, and what they’ve been through, is always a part of who we are in the present. And it delivers that message with precision force throughout. Don’t miss it.
“Pachinko” may not have the grandiose, accumulative power it seeks, but it does have many facets to recommend it, including the power of its storytellers, in front of and behind the camera.
While she [showrunner Soo Hugh] conjures moments of immense power, and of connection, throughout, “Pachinko” does not, finally, cohere. One yearns for the show that let its key moments sing without the at-times forced collisions between eras, ones that can keep viewers feeling both on the hook and in the dark.
it’s well done in a bog standard way.
as another commenter mentioned this is great for 1987.
typical korean drama is much more multilayered, self aware, sophisticated this is vanilla and maybe a bit trite
it feels like it was dreamed up and executed by a bunch of well meaning execs in some office in california who actually never watched any korean drama before
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SEASON 1
It's a great 1987 Korean TV period melodrama.
Oh, right. It's 2022, you say? And woke Western TV "critics" have discovered Korea does make TV, too? So let's just praise whatever potboiler exotica reinforces our elite "in the know" wokeness.
Acting is basically vile except for a few veterans. Par for the course for Korean TV
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SEASON 1
With that score one expected a Korean "de Buddenbrook".
Far from it. It is just a bland, highly unrealistic, romanticized rags to riches family saga with stereotypical characters (the angelic doting father figure, the " cursed" mother, the gifted child on which family fortune relies....). As with the typical Korean shows, acting is atrociously cliched and lacking any form of nuances and serves the unsurprising wishy-washy moralistic tale of resilience and purpose that has been done hundred times before in vastly superior fashion.
Unworldly American critics are falling over themselves as everything Korean, however mediocre and petit bourgeois, is trendy. This "tropist" trend is really "un-woke", isn't it?
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SEASON 1