Drops of God, tv series — petit plaisir #392

Thank you for reading TSLL. The first two posts are complimentary. You have 1 free post view remaining this month.

Become a Member for as little as $4/mo and enjoy unlimited reading of TSLL blog.

A tremendous thank you to all of the TSLL readers who have suggested over the past 18 months that I tune in to watch this series, because once I finally did realize it wasn’t what I feared it might be (more on that below), I absolutely enjoyed watching it and think you might too.

Drops of God, streaming on AppleTV+ premiered back in April 2023. Yep, I’m a little bit late to this one, maybe a lot late. The first season runs for eight episodes, each about an hour in length. With a unique backstory, the storyline is based on a manga series titled Kami no Shizuku. Created by a brother and sister team that chose the pseudonym Tadashi Agi, and the series is illustrated by Shu Okimoto. The manga series began in 2004 and ran until 2014. Adapted into a drama series for television, we now have Drops of God.

Why was I initially hesitant to watch, you may be wondering? I have to say that the publicity for this series made me leery to watch it because if you watch the trailer (included below), there is a thriller-esque and suspenseful tone which to my eye and ear came across as ominous, and as someone who doesn’t watch the sensationalized dramas that involve scare-tactics that keep your heart-beat pumping throughout the show, and tend to veer from reality a bit too much, I just wasn’t interested. So for nearly 18 months I didn’t watch it until I happened to have my Apple subscription so I could watch La Maison, and I thought to myself, well, just give Drops of God a try. So I did.

Within the first episode we receive quite a bit of backstory, family and childhood snips and clips of the protagonist is Camille Léger, played by French actress, Fleur Geffrier. The entire plot of the series centers around a competition between Camille and her now deceased father (Alexander Léger)’s protege who lives in Japan, Issei Tomine played by Tomohisa Yamashita. The competition is to determine who will gain Camille’s father’s estate that includes more than 87,000 bottles of wine collected from around the world along with his luxury home in Tokyo and ownership of the famous Léger Wine Guide. The drama immediately begins as we learn that at the young age of seven or eight, Camille’s father was teaching her, or finessing her palette and sense of smell, to be able to identify varietals of wine.

Rest assured, I am not including any spoilers, so I just want to explain why the first episode may be unsettling only because we are shown Camille’s childhood through her memory of the time with her father in the wine cellars in Provence when they are practicing blind taste tests of wine (she is not tasting the wine, only spitting it out or only smelling it). We later learn that there is more to the story.

Fast forward to today, and Camille is 29, has been estranged from her father since her childhood when her mother quickly removed her child from his custody and divorced him, neither to see him again until they both learn he is on death’s door which is when the storyline begins. (By the way, fans of Candice Renoir will delight in seeing the star of that series, Cécile Bois, stars as Camille’s mother in Drops of God.)

Yet another unique quality to this series is that it involves three different languages, actually four if you count Italian as a few of the characters travel to Italy for an episode, and three different countries – Japan, France and Italy. And while you are hearing four different languages throughout the series, the primary language is English because when the story takes them to Toyko, the common language is English. I didn’t find following the subtitles difficult and actually felt it enhanced the complexities of the story making it all the more intriguing.

As I mentioned above, what did throw me off initially when I started watching was seeing this young girl who is being trained to be astute and aware of this amazing skill that she’s been born with of recognizing wine varietals. Since she is very young, you’re not sure exactly what’s going on, and you might presume (thankfully incorrectly) that there’s some form of abuse taking place; however, the child, the viewer starts to discover that Camille actually quite enjoys this wine training and actually makes some decisions on her own without her father’s prompting or knowledge that he wouldn’t want her to do because some of the unwanted outcomes. Fast forward to present day, Camille is 29 years old, is a successfully published author, and each episodes involves a segment of a beautiful wine-centered scavenger hunt. In many ways, it is a coming-of-age story, albeit just a decade or so delayed in Camille’s case, but understandably delayed once we know her story. which is gradually revealed to the viewer as the series unfolds.

By the end of this first season (a second season was recently confirmed), each character is likable and some very likable as I found Camille’s journey of self-discovery and self-liberation to be one that caused me to like her more and more with each episode. You might enjoy some characters more than others, but there is something likable about all the characters by the end of season one. Okay, there is one person you might not like at all, but it’s a person whose role actually flips in regards to the presentation of them at the beginning and who we know them to reveal themselves to be at the end. But, truly, all of the other characters are extremely likable.

Enjoy stepping into the world of wine, traveling the globe on private jets and stepping into a variety of different cultures all on the stage of this one series.

Long story short, I highly recommend this series. If you’re looking for a travel show, a drama that’s well told with a lovely, engaging storyline, likable characters, and an opportunity to dive into the world of the wine culture of France, Tokyo and Italy, watch Drops of God.

Oh! One last detail of obvious importance that deserves to be addressed. If you’re wondering why the God reference in the title. This is not a religious story whatsoever, and they wait to give away what the reason for God is in that phrase until the last episode. If you’re someone who knows wines or just knows the general importance of anything successfully maturing in a garden or how to grow just about anything, you’ll know what God is in reference to. Okay, I’ve probably given way too much away.

As I mentioned above, a second season is being made and I will be sure to give you a heads up on the week it premieres in the regular Friday post, This & That.

Have a look at the trailer below (remember, this introduction of the series, I feel, is a bit misleading – it isn’t as dark as it presents itself to be).

~Watch Drops of God on AppleTV+ here.