Rashida Jones has long ago shed her nepo baby label and deserves credit for crafting her own fascinating, well-rounded career that I bet nobody saw coming. As the daughter of music legend Quincy Jones and actress/model Peggy Lipton, she probably could have done anything she wanted (especially after graduating from Harvard in 1997), but she decided to follow her mother’s footsteps into acting and soared to fame as the loveable best friend Ann Perkins on the long-running NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation (2009-2015). Since then, she’s made indie films (On the Rocks), adult animation (Duncanville), apocalyptic sci-fi (Silo), another mainstream sitcom (Angie Tribeca) and an 
offbeat, off-the-radar comedy series (Toast of Tinseltown). In other words, there’s no anticipating her next move and there’s nothing she won’t—or can’t—do.
And Rashida Jones’s latest project, a weirdly original Japanese-flavored drama/comedy/thriller is not only the best thing she’s ever done, it’s another reminder that Apple is continuing to serve up some of the most innovative television in the medium.
Sunny stars Jones as Suzie, an American living in Kyoto, Japan, who is mourning the recent loss of her engineer husband, Masa, and their son, Zen, who died in a plane crash. Suzie is having a hard time getting actual confirmation about whether Masa and Zen were on the plane, however, so she and her mother-in-law, Noriko, played by the magnificent Judy Ongg, are caught in a horrible purgatory of not knowing about their loved ones. Suzie’s depression causes her to retreat even more into herself, but the arrival of a robot that her husband was working on before his death prompts her to seek some answers to questions that may bring her some peace.
There is an awful lot in Sunny that we don’t need more of, like the theme of a robot teaching a human the concept of humanity (oooh, epiphany!) or the not-so-subtle message of the inherent dangers of over-indulging the capacity of AI, but there is still so much about the world of this show that I loved to be immersed in that it made it all worthwhile.
First of all, it’s hilarious. All of the actors are comically and dramatically gifted, and often they are able to shift, sometimes even within a scene. The tone is constantly changing and its unpredictability kept me engaged to the very last moment (and what a great last moment).
The style is great, the setting is gorgeous, the production design is top-notch. It’s set in Japan, most of the show is in Japanese, the modern-day Japanese culture is vibrant and beautiful, a true visual tapestry made for the medium.
The actors are all top-notch, from Jones and Ongg, who are at the top of their games, to Hidetoshi Nishijima, the amazing actor who plays Masa, who played the lead in Drive My Car, the 2022 film that was nominated for Best Picture and won Best International Film for Japan. The entire cast is excellent. If I had any quibble, it would be the voice of Sunny, which I wish had been a little more charismatic.
There is also a strange subplot thrown in about the Japanese mafia in order to shoehorn in a conflict, I understand why, but it feels forced and lazy. But it really doesn’t matter, because the heart and soul of Sunny lies elsewhere, and they knock that out of the park.
Sunny is ten 30-minute episodes of near bliss, original, inventive narrative television at its best. No word yet on whether there will be a second season, but, if you feel the same way I do at the end of the last episode, you’ll be screaming for it as loudly as I am.