‘Pachinko’ wins best foreign-language series at this year’s Critics Choice Awards

18 January, 2023

Pachinko

Apple TV+’s Korean drama series Pachinko bagged the best foreign-language series award at this year’s Critics Choice Awards.

The ceremony for this year’s edition of the Critics Choice Awards took place in Los Angeles last weekend on January 15. Per Yonhap News Agency, the period drama beat out eight other frontrunners for the best foreign-language series award at the ceremony, marking the second consecutive year that a Korean-language series has scored a trophy in the category.

Pachinko also beat out another K-drama series up for the same award – Netflix/ENA show Extraordinary Attorney Woo. The remaining nominees for the same category were Netflix’s 1899, Borgen and Kleo; HBO Max’s Garcia!; MUBI’s The Kingdom Exodus; HBO’s My Brilliant Friend; and Apple TV+’s Tehran.

Last year’s best foreign-language series winner was Netflix’s hit series Squid Game, which subsequently became the first Korean show to clinch the award, the winner of which is determined by an association of roughly 600 film and television broadcast critics based in North America.

Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Min Jin Lee, Pachinko tells the story of a fictional Korean immigrant family in Japan over four generations through the life of its matriarch, Sunja. It premiered on Apple TV+ in March 2022. It stars Minari actress and Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-jung, Lee Min-ho and Kim Min-ha, among others.

Pachinko also made it to NME’s list of the best TV shows of 2022. Earlier in the year, NME reviewer Rhian Daly had awarded the show five stars. “Graceful and poignant, Pachinko slips back and forth through timelines without getting muddled or convoluted,” she wrote. “No matter which era we’re in, its cast deliver some of the best performances on TV in recent memory, not least Kim, who expresses every emotion – betrayal, sorrow, joy, trepidation – in each tiny movement she makes. Youn is also unmissable, seamlessly picking up from the younger actor’s work.”

The post ‘Pachinko’ wins best foreign-language series at this year’s Critics Choice Awards appeared first on NME.