The sci-fi mystery series Sunny is about a woman who lives with a domestic robot after losing her family

American series Sunny throws the viewer right into the shoes of his protagonist, in the middle of confusion and sadness.

Suzie (Rashida Jones) is an American woman settled in Kyoto whose life has fallen to the bottom: her husband Masa (among other Drive My Carista everything Hidetoshi Nishijima) and his son have disappeared in a plane crash.

The mother-in-law tries to force her daughter-in-law to mourn in a more traditional and visible way, but Suzie’s strength is mostly sufficient for housework.

However, it slowly dawns on Suzie that Masa hasn’t told her everything about her work and life. The husband didn’t work in the refrigerator department of an electronics company, but in robots.

Surprisingly Suzie is brought home with her own robot, Sunny, developed by Masa. At the same time, the viewer’s hair stands up: at the very beginning of the series, a glimpse of a robot is seen next to a bloody human corpse. But Suzie is also blissfully unaware of this and treats the next and helpful Sunny mostly with irritation.

A nagging question is planted in the viewer’s mind: is the purpose of the robot to alleviate Suzie’s loneliness or perhaps something else? Can a robot have its own motives or is it carrying out someone’s plan? And if so, whose? Through these questions, scifi’s essential question about technology enters the picture – is it a ring or a host.

in Sunny we are somewhere in an undefined near future, where artificial intelligence is ahead of our time and home robots are commonplace. However, with the bot, Suzie gets some sort of fixed point in her life. He sets out to find out why Masa has kept things dark.

Shades of a thriller appear in the mystery when a one-fingered yakuza boss and a black market for forbidden robot codes are added to the picture. Excitement is still only one side Katie Robbinsin created in a series based on an Irish by Colin O’Sullivan to the novel The Dark Manual (2018).

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Shades of a thriller appear in the mystery.

Robbins has previously written, among other things, a drama series The Affairand hasn’t really touched sci-fi. Perhaps that’s why the series manages to take an exciting look at sci-fi’s most popular topic, the conflict between man-made technology and man himself.

In Sunny there are many other things to like. It creates comfortably on the border between black and sad comedy. There is comedy both in the snappy dialogue and in the contrast of the images. The mood of the dark scenes is appropriately strained when the ball-headed Sunny sways in the background, acknowledging Suzie and vice versa. Robbins has changed the original male robot to a female one, and in Sunny sisterly friendship also develops between the characters.

Robbins has co-constructed the lead director Lucy Tcherniakin with an intact and atmospheric world that attracts you from episode to episode. Jones, who plays the main role, is at home in it. He wades with his whole body in a wave of sadness and uncertainty. The mischievous light of the smiling robot, the ubiquitous technology and cultural differences only emphasize Suzie’s loneliness.

In ten parts the series also has a pleasant rhythm, and it unravels its mystery without rushing. This is despite the fact that the episodes are not hour-long chunks but rather compact. Since everything is not tuned only for mystery and excitement, the risk of missing a beat is small.

Sunny, Apple TV+