Cult of Mac is pleased to debut a new feature, 3 Reasons to Watch, in which we highlight an Apple TV+ show or movie worthy of consideration. This week we’re looking at sommelier potboiler Drops of God, based on the manga by Yuko and Shin Kibayashi.
The show is currently airing its first season. Here’s why Drops of God is worth your time.
3 Reasons to Watch: Drops of God
1. Spellbinding storytelling
Drops of God tells the peculiar and engrossing tale of Alexandre Léger (Stanley Weber), one of the foremost wine experts who ever lived, and his successors. When he died, Alexandre left behind a challenge in his will. His protegé, Issei Tomine (Tomohisa Yamashita) — a man as ruthless as he is disciplined — and Alexandre’s estranged daughter, Camille (Fleur Geffrier), must compete to prove which one understands wine (and the dead man) the best.
Euro crime television stalwart Oded Ruskin directs the show. In his hands, a world of rarefied aestheticism and specialized knowledge becomes something like a chessboard or a bank heist. The games and tricks the two competitors play, and the intense training they undergo to perfect their instrument in this game of wills, unfold with breathless intensity. And that makes Drops of God more exciting than your average cops-and-robbers show.
2. A peek into the creative process
One of the great pleasures of television in the 21st century is the ready availability of programming from other countries and cultures. It was much harder to get your hands on foreign media even 20 years ago. Now the cross-pollination of subjects and nationalities has made uncommonly interesting TV easier than ever to track down.
And so, yes, part of the appeal of a show like Drops of God is the way it folds this pleasure into its text (by virtue of it being about a culture clash between French and Japanese wine experts). But it’s also evident in the ways we see the characters learning about themselves through research. The discovery of secrets lying in a sip of wine becomes a kind of therapeutic exercise. The more we learn about wine with the characters, the more excited we are to spend more time with them.
3. Obsessions and betrayals
We’re in a little golden age of shows about corporate intrigue like Succession, Billions and Industry. And, though Drops of God is first and foremost about self-actualization through intense research and passion, it has enough space in the margins to give you a window into the price of success.
Camille and Issei’s doggedness in trying to out-taste each other comes from a place of insecurity. But in the back of their minds at all times rests the promise of the world’s most extensive and rare wine collection. And with it, the status that will come from being proclaimed the true heir to the Léger legacy.
Issei’s story is further complicated by the fact that he stepped away from his own family’s corporation, a billion-dollar diamond concern, in order to pursue his love of wine and please his father figure, rather than doing what his actual parents want from him. The crisscrossing allegiances and the uncertainty of the characters’ motivations raise the stakes of every sip of wine, every step the characters take toward their destiny.
Watch Drops of God on Apple TV+
New episodes of Drops of God arrive Fridays on Apple TV+.
Rated: TV-MA
Watch on: Apple TV+
Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper and But God Made Him A Poet: Watching John Ford in the 21st Century, the director of 25 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
