The good thing about Apple TV+’s seemingly endless budget is that it allows for projects that other networks and streaming services might put in a box to explore their potential in creative ways. It truly feels like Apple is the best place for creators, and not just because of the money. Despite a few recent missteps, it’s valuable to have a company this massive that’s willing to open the wallets for shows as fundamentally different as “Ted Lasso,” “Dark Matter,” and “Swagger.”
Into this line-up enters creator Katie Robbins’ “Sunny,” one of the most surprisingly accomplished and hard-to-pin-down shows of 2024. It’s a defiantly strange program, a show that refuses to be put in a traditional genre box, blending elements of thriller, comedy, relationship drama, and science fiction into something that feels new. It’s constantly shifting in a way that keeps it engaging well past the point when most streaming shows sag under the weight of ten-episode orders. Don’t miss this one.
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Based on the book “The Dark Manual” by Colin O’Sullivan, “Sunny” takes place in a not-too-distant future in which technology has advanced ever so slightly to include something called Homebots, androids designed to be helpers and even companions. Unlike the humanoids in a project like “After Yang,” which feels like a spiritual sibling to this project given how much that excellent Kogonada film unpacks what really matters about human existence through a robot’s eyes, the machines of “Sunny” couldn’t possibly be mistaken for anything else with their chunky white bodies and displays that look more like emojis than faces.
Our eyes into this future belong to Suzie Sakamoto (Rashida Jones), a woman living in Kyoto who we meet in the worst time of her life. Her husband Masa (the great Hidetoshi Nishijima of “Drive My Car”) and their son have gone missing after boarding a plane, presumed dead in a crash. Suzie’s only hope is that somehow Masa didn’t get on the plane, but everything changes when a mysterious man named Yuki (Jun Kunimura of “The Wailing”) drops by Suzie’s house with a Homebot named Sunny (playfully voiced by Joanna Sotomura). While Suzie doesn’t like the idea of a too-cheery sentient A.I. in her house, she’s stunned to learn that Masa helped design the android, even including some of his quirks in her mannerisms. What else didn’t Suzie know about her husband of over a decade? And what could Sunny’s arrival mean about his disappearance?
The awkward connection between Suzie and Sunny sets up a show about an oil-and-water tech friendship between a grieving, bitter widow and the robot who allows her to understand her husband in a new way, but “Sunny” isn’t exactly that. It quickly reveals itself to be a much weirder, thematically richer program about loneliness, connection, and invention as Suzie seeks to uncover the truth about not just her husband but an entire world from which she has isolated herself. The journey brings her into the life of a bartender named Mixxy, played with wonderful energy by a musician known as annie the clumsy, and a blonde Yakuza villainess played with icy determination by Yukiko Ehara aka You. Flashbacks to Masa’s past allow for great work from Nishijima too, but the show stays anchored to Jones, who does the best work of her career, revealing a depth of dramatic work she’s too rarely been allowed to explore in other projects.
It’s also worth noting that “Sunny” looks and sounds fantastic. The technical team of directors and craftspeople assembled by Robbins take genuine risks with visual language in a way that too little TV has done lately, giving “Sunny” the feel of an original indie film more than a cold corporate product. Having A24 behind the project likely helped with the refined pedigree of the final product, but Robbins deserves the credit for taking scripts that could have easily lost their way visually and finding the right designers, cinematographers, and editors to collaborate on what’s a truly complex vision.
Most of all, “Sunny” is unpredictably weird in a way that’s rewarding instead of forced. It’s constantly shifting in genre and tone as it explores not just the common dramatic set-up of the wife who learns more about her husband after his death than during his life but more relatable themes like free will, grief, and the little traumas we carry throughout our lives. It’s alternately very funny and strangely moving, especially daring in its back half when one has to remind themselves that it’s essentially a mystery about the fate of a husband and son. Instead of leaning on the “what happened” thriller aspect, “Sunny” shoots off in so many different directions, blending dreams, flashbacks, and character drama in a way that defies categorization.
And that’s really what separates “Sunny” from a lot of recent television. While the money has been flowing from companies like Netflix, Max, and Apple, there has been a notable lack of ingenuity lately in the form to go with the massive budgets and A-list casts. If we’re lucky, a show about an optimistic robot can help buck the trend. [B+]
“Sunny” debuts on Apple TV+ on July 10.