Apple TV’s 16-Part Historical Drama With Near-Perfect Rotten Tomatoes Score Is Too Good To Cancel

Published Aug 1, 2026, 2:01 PM EDT

While Hulu has the dystopian drama Paradise and Netflix has the Stranger Things franchise, Apple TV’s sci-fi lineup is still the one to beat. From the dark corporate satire Severance to the layered dystopian thriller Silo, to the shockingly good Monsterverse spinoff series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, to the multiverse thriller Dark Matter, to the upcoming William Gibson adaptation Neuromancer, it is clear that Apple TV is heavily invested in building a brand around ambitious sci-fi stories.

That is why it’s so intriguing and unexpected that one of the streaming service’s most underrated shows is a historical drama that has gone under the radar despite its widespread critical acclaim. Adapted from the 2017 novel of the same name by author Min Jin Lee, Pachinko tells the epic story of a Korean family across four generations. Created by Soo Hugh, the show’s story begins in 1915 and runs all the way to 1989 as Kim Min-ha’s Kim Sunja moves from Japanese-occupied Busan to Koreatown in Osaka. Highlighting the plight of Koreans living under Japanese occupation, Pachinko is a challenging watch that still finds time for moments of humanity and humor amid its tragedy.

Apple TV’s Pachinko Is One Of The Best Historical Dramas On Television

As Pachinko’s plot continues, the show’s story opens up to include characters like Soji Arai’s wealthy pachinko parlor owner, Baek, and Lee Min-ho’s merchant Koh Hansu. With two primary parallel timelines charting Kim Sunja’s story from the 1910s and 1930s and her grandson Solomon’s corporate ascent in the 1980s, Pachinko uses its vast canvas to paint a complex, compelling vision of recent Korean social history.

Since many historical dramas focus primarily on white European characters and so many hit South Korean shows, like Netflix’s action thriller Bloodhounds, are contemporary genre fare, Pachinko offers viewers something fresh and original while still satisfying as a multi-generational epic. True to the expansive story of the novel, the show spends its first two seasons fleshing out the central family across both timelines, with a view to telling the entire sweeping story across three or four seasons.

Sadly, it is not yet clear whether Pachinko season 3 will happen, as the series hasn’t been renewed. Although its first and second seasons were both met with a staggering Rotten Tomatoes rating of 97% apiece, this alone may not necessarily be enough to convince the streaming service to bring back the show. Season 2 ended in 2024 and no third outing has been announced yet.

Pachinko Deserves A Third Season From Apple TV

Since Dark Matter season 2 will soon be released and season 1 of that sci-fi thriller aired on Apple TV in 2024, it might seem worrying that Pachinko hasn’t even been renewed yet, let alone entered production. However, there may not necessarily be any reason for fans of the historical drama to worry unduly. After all, the gaps between seasons of TV have increased in length exponentially since the emergence of streaming services.

With three years elapsing between seasons 1 and 2 of Severance, seasons 1 and 2 of Wednesday, and seasons 4 and 5 of Stranger Things, it would make sense if the large cast of Pachinko and its expensive, period-specific production design led to a longer wait between seasons. However, regardless of the reasoning behind the delay, the show badly needs a third season.

Pachinko is simply too good to be abandoned after establishing the story of the family’s first generation, but leaving the narrative arcs of its second and third generation frustratingly ambiguous. This mirrors the construction of the ambitious source novel, but also means that Apple TV’s Pachinko would feel crushingly incomplete without at least one more outing.