Drops of God: Apple TV+ Wine Drama Proves Very French & Very Weird

It’s hard to describe Drops of God. On the surface, it’s a prestigious-looking Apple TV+ series adapted from a highly popular and influential manga about wine appreciation. We’re not saying being French is weird. This series manages to be French and weird.

Drops of God is adapted from a bestselling manga and broadly follows the original plot: the protagonist has to brush up on their wine appreciation skills in order to win a competition with a genius wine expert to inherit their father’s priceless wine estate. Aside from that, the new Apple TV+ show changes everything. Instead of a male Japanese hero, this new version features a French heroine. It keeps her rival Japanese and the setting of their competition in Tokyo though the heroine retreats to France to learn to recognize wine. But where the manga is light and breezy, the Apple+ series is more austere, its Tokyo scenes noirish, creating a chilly, surreal Science Fiction world out of a David Cronenberg movie.

Drops of God is About Daddy Issues and Body Horror

Camille Léger (Fleur Geffrier), apart from having the most French name ever, is a weird heroine with a weird trauma. She can’t drink alcohol without having a violent, life-threatening reaction, bleeding from the nose, getting hives, and passing out, as one does. She’s a writer who hasn’t been able to write a second novel, which is also very French. When her dying estranged father, the source of her trauma, calls, imploring her to fly to his deathbed in Tokyo, she refuses but agrees, which is also very French. French drama just loves contradictory characters. She’s like an escapee from a Cronenberg movie, her affliction close to Body Horror.

Camille’s rival for her father’s inheritance, Issey Tomine (Tomohisa Yamashita), is as much of an underdog as she is. In the manga, he’s a rich, powerful wine critic and influencer. Issey, in the series, comes from a powerful family that disapproves of his choice of onology as a career and wants him back as heir to the family business empire. Camille and Issey’s fight isn’t just for a priceless wine collection but for their right to define their identities and futures. It’s all about daddy issues – Camille wants to have a posthumous reconciliation with her father and her heritage, and Issey with forging his own destiny away from his family.

The Weirdest Show on Apple TV+

The manga version of Drops of God had an easygoing, comfort food, “case of the week” procedural format that was already previously adapted reasonably faithfully by both Japanese and Korean television. The Apple TV+ version feels the need to up the stakes to make everything intense and terribly personal, like an HBO prestige drama. By the end of the first two episodes, the tone starts to lighten up, and we start to see a bit more of the infodump about how wine is made. Even then, the weird surreal intensity of this version of Drops of God makes it possibly the weirdest Apple TV+ drama series to date.

Drops of God is streaming on Apple TV+.