Pachinko’s beauty lies in its attention to detail. This is a TV show determined to utilize its visual space completely, so the camera purposefully lingers on facial expressions and landscapes, finding meaning in mundane chores like cooking, eating, and driving. It makes Apple TV+’s drama inherently immersive, a necessity because the show jumps across years, viewpoints, languages, and countries.
The best scenes in that show are of the emperor. Dude has such gravitas.
Like sure, the show is nothing like the books, but it's well done enough that it doesn't matter.