Sunny, review: it’s slick, but Rashida Jones’s sci-fi is yet more middling Apple TV+ filler

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a woman who believed she was happily married is forced to reassess everything after her husband dies/disappears and dark secrets emerge. This feels like the basis for roughly 20 per cent of all TV drama, and it’s disappointing to find it propping up Sunny, Apple TV+’s latest sci-fi thriller.

It’s not the only familiar theme. Robots with a mind of their own. The dangers of AI. The weirdness of Japan, as experienced by Westerners (vending machines! Instructions that aren’t even written in English!). It’s a slick series, competently produced, but if you watch it you will find yourself wishing that it offered something more. Sunny isn’t a patch on Severance, another retro-futurish Apple TV+ thriller which had smarter things to say and delivered actual thrills.

Rashida Jones is the lead actress, appearing in pretty much every scene. Her Suzie Sakamoto is an American who settled in Japan after meeting and marrying Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima), who tells her he designs fridges for a living. When we first meet Suzie, she is processing the news that Masa and their young son are missing, presumed dead, in a plane crash.

A man arrives at Suzie’s house bearing a gift: a robot named Sunny, with a beach ball-sized head and various emojis for a face. The man explains that Masa made robots, not fridges, and he programmed this one to keep Suzie company.

At first, Suzie wants nothing to do with Sunny. She hates robots, and this one is so relentlessly upbeat that it drives her mad. But she has no friends in Japan, and soon comes to rely on Sunny for companionship. Is Suzie right to place her trust in this seemingly sweet-natured machine?

As a plot, this is fine, if familiar (inevitably, the Yakuza make an appearance). The main problem with Sunny is its tone. It’s billed as being “darkly comedic” but it doesn’t go hard enough on the darkness or the comedy. Suzie has regular flashbacks featuring her son, but she comes across as misanthropic or flatly furious rather than grief-stricken. As Suzie’s mother-in-law, Judy Ongg does a nice line in disapproving looks and tart comments, but otherwise the comedy extends to the robot’s sassy delivery or Jones running out of loo roll and tripping over while trying to shuffle to the cupboard with her trousers around her ankles. The opening titles promise a kookiness that appears only in brief flashes.

Apple TV+ continues its policy of releasing shows in weekly instalments – beginning, as here, with a double bill. I’m sufficiently interested to come back for more, but have a feeling it won’t improve.

The first two episodes of Sunny are available on Apple TV+ now; one episode weekly thereafter