Something to watch tonight: Thursday 7 September

The Makanai (Kore-eda, 2023) is streaming on Netflix

We tried this one because we are fans of Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters, Our Little Sister, Still Walking, I Wish, After the Storm, etc.) and couldn’t quite believe that he would pro­duce a mod­est little Netflix series while all the fest­ivals were wait­ing for a block­buster feature!

It turns out that The Makanai is not that mod­est and requires no apo­lo­gies. If you are a fan of Kore-eda’s work you will be more than sat­is­fied, and if you are com­ing in to his work cold, you will be delighted.

Based – as so many mod­ern Japanese stor­ies are – on a pop­u­lar manga, The Makanai is the story of two friends who are determ­ined to make a life in the world of maiko (the Kyoto ver­sion of geisha).

Sumire (Natsuki Deguchi) turns out to be a nat­ur­al – a star in the mak­ing – but best friend Kiyo (Nana Mori) is more at home in the kit­chen of the sorority-style house where the young train­ees live.

So, we get intro­duced to a tra­di­tion that at first seems impen­et­rable but – over nine short and delight­ful epis­odes – we get to under­stand, appre­ci­ate and love.

And, thanks to Kiyo’s skills in the kit­chen, the series is also a beau­ti­ful intro­duc­tion to Japanese (often region­al) food and ingredi­ents at the same time.

I haven’t felt grief at the end of a series quite this badly for a while.

We watched the whole thing in a less than a week and then sat around won­der­ing what could pos­sibly be next.

The soundtrack scratches that itch, I sup­pose, so I bought it and love it.

If you like The Makanai, please share this update.

There’s a sub­scriber drive com­ing and read­er recom­mend­a­tions are always welcome.

I’d love to chat on Notes or in the Comments if you enjoyed The Makanai as much as we did.