SHOW OF THE WEEK NO. 1: Pachinko (March 25, Apple TV Plus)

Minha Kim and Lee Min-Ho in “Pachinko.” PHOTO CREDIT: Apple TV Plus

In a TV universe full of distractions, “Pachinko” is a show that demands your full attention.

Based on the 2017 novel by Korean-American author Min Jin Lee, it’s an epic on a sweeping scale but also a deeply human story that finds its power in small, intimate moments.

It shifts between 1915 when a girl named Sunja is born in the fishing village of Yeongdo in South Korea and 1989 when that girl’s grandson, an investment banker named Solomon (Jin Ha), returns from America to Osaka, Japan, where his family has settled.

The family’s personal dramas in the intervening years are played out against the colonization of Korea by the Japanese, which lasted from 1910 to 1945. It’s not a period of history that I expect non-Korean North Americans would know much about, but in the series the cruelty of that subjugation is a continuous thread. The Koreans are treated as second-class citizens in their own country and as less than human when they migrate to Japan for jobs.

For Sunja’s family, everything turns on an illicit romance between the teenage Sunja (Minha Kim) and the older Koh Hansu (Lee Min-Ho), a Korean man who has become rich by collaborating with the Japanese. When Sunja becomes pregnant and Hansu is unable to marry her, Sunja and her widowed mother Yangjin (Inji Jeong) face ruin.

The title “Pachinko,” a pinball-like arcade game that originated in Japan, is obviously a metaphor. Players sometimes win despite the fact the machines are rigged to make that more difficult.

In the case of Sunja, poor and uneducated though intelligent and intuitive, that lucky break comes in the form of Korean minister Isak (Steve Sang-Hyun Noh), a stranger in Yeongdo who nearly dies of tuberculosis but is nursed back to health by Yangjin. He offers to marry Sunja and give her baby a name. But the cost of being saved is Sunja leaving behind everything she knows and beginning a hand-to-mouth existence in Osaka with Isak’s unhappy brother Yoseb (Junwoo Han) and his wife Kyunghee (Jung Eun-chae).

I don’t want to give the impression it’s all doom and gloom, though. Love between the characters — familial love, friendship, romantic love, love of self and one’s culture — is woven throughout and uplifts the story.

Three wonderful actors play Sunja at various ages, including Yu-na Jeon as a child and Youn Yuh-jung, who won an Oscar for “Minari,” as an old woman, but Minha Kim is particularly affecting in her portrayal.

Two other things to note. I initially found the show’s jumps back and forth in time off-putting, particularly since it takes a while to tease out the importance of various characters, but I’m glad I stuck with it.

And do make sure you watch the opening credits, in which the lead actors joyously dance to the title song, the Grass Roots’ “Let’s Live for Today.”

SHOW OF THE WEEK NO. 2: Bridgerton (March 25, Netflix)

From left, Charithra Chandran, Simone Ashley and Jonathan Bailey in Season 2 of “Bridgerton.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Liam Daniel/Netflix

I did not so much binge the eight new episodes of “Bridgerton” as devour them.

After all, we fans of the Chris Van Dusen-created, Shonda Rhimes-produced period romantic drama have been waiting 13 months for the new season, clearly not as long as, say, a “droughtlander” but long enough if you fell in love with the show in December 2020.

All the things that contributed to making the first season so delightful are back — colourful costumes, sumptuous sets, anachronistic music, humour, snappy dialogue, feminist underpinnings — but the most important ingredient is the romance.

Does it live up to the Season 1 wooing between Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) and the Duke of Hastings (Regé-Jean Page, who true to his word does not appear in the new season)? Yes, absolutely.

This season is all about Viscount Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey), the eldest of the seven Bridgerton siblings, who was left with a heavy burden after his father Edmund died when Anthony was still a teenager.

Alas, that crushing sense of duty has stunted Anthony emotionally. When he decides it’s time to do right as heir and find a wife, he’s not looking for a soul mate so much as checking boxes on a list.

Miss Edwina Sharma (Charithra Chandran), charming, accomplished and pretty, fits the bill, having travelled from Bombay to London to find a husband with her widowed mother, Lady Mary (Shelley Conn), and stepsister Kate (Simone Ashley). She has also been anointed the season’s “diamond” by Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel).

But Kate wants a love match for Edwina and is determined to thwart Anthony. And there’s an even bigger obstacle: it’s clear from their first antagonistic meeting, when Anthony encounters Kate taking a very unladylike, early morning horse ride, that they’re meant to be together.

A big part of what makes this season so delicious is how long we have to wait for true love to bloom. I don’t want to spoil anything, but let’s just say that Anthony’s pursuit of Edwina gets very far along, almost to the point of no return. Meanwhile, the passion between him and Kate crackles off the screen with every longing glance and fleeting touch.

Anthony even gets his own Mr. Darcy emerging dripping wet from a pond moment (see “Pride and Prejudice,” 1995) when his unacknowledged ardour for Kate — and her corgi Newton — literally knocks him off his feet. (I have to assume that was Van Dusen’s homage to “P&P” since he told me that 1995 scene inspired his creation of “Bridgerton.”)

Whereas Daphne and Simon were enjoying newlywed sex by Episode 5 of the first season, here we have to wait till Episode 6 just to get a kiss and I’m not mad about that. The anticipation adds to the enjoyment.

Meanwhile, the series is generous with its other characters. We get lots more of the Queen, of Lady Danbury (Adjoa Andoh), of Violet (Ruth Gemmell), Benedict (Luke Thompson) and Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton), of Penelope Featherington, a.k.a. Lady Whistledown (Nicola Coughlan), and her best friend Eloise Bridgerton (Claudia Jessie). The marriage-averse Eloise even gets a love interest.

My favourite secondary character development, however, involves Lady Portia Featherington (Polly Walker), something of an avaricious laughing stock in Season 1. This season she gets to demonstrate her intelligence, her survival instincts and her devotion to her daughters.

And that brings me to one more point: love of family is an even bigger theme this season and one that gives the episodes a warmth that undercuts the catty frivolousness of the ton. Kate’s and Anthony’s determination to stifle their longings in the name of duty is motivated by their devotion to their families, no matter how wrongheaded and shortsighted it may be.

Watching “Bridgerton” might feel like a guilty pleasure, but there’s some substance behind the froth.

Short Takes

Sammy Azero and Mo Zeighami in “Tehranto.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy Canadian Film Fest

Canadian Film Fest (March 22 to April 2, 9 p.m., Super Channel Fuse)

Ten Canadian-made feature films and 28 shorts make up the third annual edition of this virtual festival. The opener is “Tehranto” by Iranian-Canadian filmmaker Faran Moradi. It’s a love story between Badi (Sammy Azero), who came with his family to Toronto after the Iranian Revolution, and Canadian-born Sharon (Mo Zeighami), whose Iranian parents came to Toronto via Europe. Differences of class — Sharon’s parents are well off while Badi’s father delivers pizza — and culture, between Iranians born there and here, complicate the relationship. See superchannel.ca for the full festival slate. Each movie is preceded by an introduction and a short film.

John Cameron Mitchell as Joe Exotic in “Joe vs. Carole.” PHOTO CREDIT: Mark Taylor/Peacock

Joe vs. Carole (March 23, 9 p.m., Showcase/StackTV)

The first question that comes to mind about this Peacock limited series is “Why?” The answer is likely that in March 2020, when the show went into development, it seemed like a good idea since the Netflix docuseries “Tiger King” about Joe Maldonado-Passage, a.k.a. Joe Exotic, and his nemesis Carole Baskin seemed like all anyone could talk about. But two years later, an eight-part dramedy about the feud between the Oklahoma private zoo keeper and the Florida animal rights activist seems like overkill. It’s not that it’s badly done. John Cameron Mitchell and Kate McKinnon certainly give the roles of the two combatants their all. Mitchell is particularly captivating as Joe Exotic, disappearing into the part. Unfortunately, you never really lose sight of the fact you’re watching Kate McKinnon play Carole. And the supporting characters, including John Finlay (Sam Keeley), John Reinke (Brian Van Holt) and Travis Maldonado (Nat Wolff), pale in comparison to their real-life counterparts. But if you can’t get enough of the “Tiger King” story have at ‘er.

Alex Mallari Jr. and Rong Fu in “Hello (Again).” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of CBC Gem

Hello (Again) and Homeschooled (March 25, CBC Gem)

The beauty of web series is that, for creators, they offer a more accessible way of getting content in front of eyeballs and, for viewers, they don’t involve a massive time commitment. Of course, “Hello (Again)” comes with a built-in guarantee of interest given that it was co-created by a man who is currently one of the most famous Canadians in the world: Simu Liu, a.k.a. Marvel superhero Shang-Chi. “Hello (Again)” comes from an idea he hatched when he was still on “Kim’s Convenience,” developed with Nathalie Younglai, a writer on “Coroner.” Over nine 10-minute episodes, line cook Jayden (Alex Mallari Jr.) begins and ends a romance with medical resident Avery (Rong Fu) but gets to try to set things right — repeatedly — after an encounter with a child no one else can hear or see. The series offers good-natured humour, quintessential Toronto scenes and a charismatic leading man. “Homeschooled,” created by Karen Knox and Gwenlyn Cumyn, offers delightfully quirky characters, led by home-schooled best friends Greta (Veronika Slowikowska) and Farzanah (Eman Ayaz) as they extol their own “rare creativity and scholastic genius” while reviling the “trads,” i.e. kids who go to regular school.

Odds and Ends

One of the most anticipated debuts of the week is the very long awaited third and final season of Donald Glover’s “Atlanta” (March 24, 10 p.m., FX), which sees Earn (Glover), Van (Zazie Beetz) and Darius (LaKeith Stanfield) accompanying Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry) on his tour of Europe. But first, the season opens with an episode about a Black boy (Christopher Farrar) and two white foster mothers that very effectively demonstrates the downsides of white saviourism.

I wasn’t able to get an advance look at it, but “Canada’s Got Talent” is coming to Citytv (March 22, 8 p.m.) and appears to be a chip off the “America’s Got Talent” block, which Canadian viewers gobble up, unlike the version that aired in 2012. “AGT” vet Howie Mandel is one of the judges for the homegrown spinoff along with Lilly Singh, Kardinal Offishall and Trish Stratus. Country singer Lindsay Ell is host.

Crave has French-language crime drama “Une Affaire Criminelle” (“A Criminal Affair”) (March 23) as well as the movie “Moonshot” (March 24), about a couple of college students who head to Mars.

Disney Plus has sci-fi series “Parallels” (March 23),  about four teenage friends who are sent into separate timelines by a mysterious event.