2025 SAG Awards Red Carpet Armani Gown Turns Heads

The series’ directors, staring with Jonathan van Tulleken and Charlotte Brändström, infuse every ritual with a mixture of sensitive detail and utilitarian appreciation. The costumes are beautiful, the tonsorial choices period-specific, but everything feels lived-in and not just eye-catching for ogling’s sake (though some of the drone-captured vistas — shot in British Columbia, augmented by CG — are astonishing).

It’s a show in which every character is defined through some personal experience of otherness and every character has an unrealized ambition, whether it’s the region’s most gifted sex worker (Yuka Kouri’s Kiku), the heir’s calculating mother (Fumi Nikaido’s Ochiba) or Mariko’s spiritual mentor, Father Alvito (Tommy Bastow). Some want status, like Kiku’s madame Gin (Yuko Miyamoto), whose dream of franchising a “geisha house” concept plays much more significantly in the book. Some want death, like Moeka Hoshi’s Fuji, directionless after a family disgrace. The most interesting characters hide behind masks of loyalty, while the least interesting characters needed a three-season arc.

March 1, 2025 | 6:19 am