Apple’s Sunny is a harrowing crime comedy with a smile on its face

More than just another science fiction parable about a future plagued by dangerous robots, Colin O’Sullivan’s 2018 novel The Dark Manual it was a lyrical meditation on grief and the emotions we project onto everyday objects. The book’s premise, prose, and thematic ambivalence about artificially intelligent machines made it seem like the kind of story that could only be adapted as a dark drama. But Apple TV Plus and A24 Sunny brings new depth and nuance to O’Sullivan’s story, seasoning it with healthy doses of whimsical, animatronic puppetry.

Equal to The Dark Manual (which appears to have been renamed recently in anticipation of Apple’s new program), Sunny revolves around Suzie Sakamoto (Rashida Jones), a woman trying to rebuild her life after a plane crash that (apparently) killed her husband Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and son Zen (Fares Belkheir).

As a transplanted American with limited ability to learn languages ​​or make new friends, grieving in near-future Japan is a bewildering experience for Suzie. Even with her overbearing mother-in-law Noriko (Judy Ongg) constantly at her door and everyone connected by her pillow-like devices—smart devices that seem inspired by Follow‘shell phone – Suzie’s loss sends her into a spiral of deep loneliness. But as painful as it is to live in a house full of memories, what unnerves Suzie most is the unexpected arrival of a house robot named Sunny (Joanna Sotomura), who insists that Masa programmed her specifically for the grieving widow before the accident.

There’s a pronounced sense of dread running through O’Sullivan’s novel that makes his homebot-filled world feel like a cold, dark place where the beat of technological progress has convinced many to adopt machines they don’t entirely understand. Jones brings some of that energy to her Suzie, who, like her book counterpart, initially doesn’t trust Sunny and attacks the homebot when he starts taking care of the housework.

But on the contrary The Dark Manualmechanical servos with their uninterrupted sensors that turn from a menacing shade of scarlet to blue as they process information, all of them SunnyThe company’s robots are presented as smiling, friend-shaped beings whose cartoonish designs are reflections of a larger shift toward aesthetically playful technology.

If Sunny had been created entirely from CGI, the energy between Sotomura and Jones might not be as dynamic as the homebot and its owner attacking each other in the show’s early episodes. But because Sunny is an animatronic doll whose animated facial expressions were real-time recreations of Sotomura, there’s a reality to their interactions that makes them both feel like more important characters (in a narrative sense).

Through Sunny and Suzie’s caregiver/caregiver relationship, Sunny explores something very real about how societies turn to technology to deal with personal and community issues. And yet the silliness of Sunny being a wide-eyed puppet who we never see (but presumably can) climb stairs is a big part of how the show also manages to work as a comedy that’s really about its two leads trying to solve a pulpy mystery.

Although few SunnyThe show’s twists and turns are entirely new, the show’s commitment to making its world feel like a plausible vision of a future where people’s gadgets work to meet their needs is fantastic. In place of the book’s allusions to tensions with North Korea, Sunny puts more emphasis on the yakuza boss, Hime (You), and the shadowy community of people who illegally unlock homebots to perform functions they technically shouldn’t be able to perform.

Some SunnyThe game’s most fascinating world-building comes through its villains and their fixation with the legendary Dark Manual key to transform homebots into killing machines. But as Suzie and Sunny’s intrigue takes them deeper into Japan’s underworld, you can feel the Apple scene Sunny ready to continue growing beyond the first season in a way that looks like it could lead to something really good.

Sunny also stars Clumsy Annie, Jun Kunimura, and Shin Shimizu. The show’s first two episodes arrived on Apple TV Plus on July 10.