The superb, globe-trotting wine drama “Drops of God” debuted in the spring of 2023, almost concurrently with the final season of “Succession.” On the one hand, the two series rhymed with fitting synchronicity; “Drops of God,” too, was driven by the question of which protagonist will take over the empire of a father figure who deeply damaged them. But on the other, the deafening noise produced by the acclaimed HBO drama — among a slew of simultaneous releases rushing into the gap between pandemic-era production shutdowns and impending strikes — initially drowned out a largely subtitled show distributed stateside by Apple TV, a relatively niche service where many series seem to fade into obscurity. Even I, a working television critic, didn’t catch up with “Drops of God” until months after its initial run concluded — to my great shame, because the eight-episode season became one of my favorites of that, or any, year.
Based on Tadashi Agi’s manga series of the same name and spearheaded by creator Quoc Dang Tran, “Drops of God” Season 1 was a near-perfect marriage of comics’ heightened, cartoon logic with the emotional nuance of flesh-and-blood reality. Protagonists Camille Léger (Fleur Geffrier) and Issei Tomine (Tomohisa Yamashita) were plunged into an objectively absurd situation, posthumously pitted against one another by Camille’s estranged father Alexandre (Stanley Weber) in a competition to determine who would inherit the renowned wine expert’s multimillion-dollar collection. (Challenges included such simple tasks as being asked to identify a singular wine from a painting inspired by the vintage.) Yet Geffrier and Yamashita’s performances imbued Camille and Issei, who come to understand they’re half-siblings due to Alexandre’s affair with Issei’s mother, with an intense and wounded humanity. As fantastical as their circumstances could seem, down to Camille’s synesthesia that allows her to identify…