Apple’s Sunny imagines a comfy future the place screens fade into the background

Sunny, a brand new sci-fi dramedy on Apple TV Plus, is completely different from most visions of the long run — primarily as a result of it barely has any screens. As an alternative, the present imagines a time when know-how is extra seamlessly built-in into our lives. Telephones rely totally on audio, pleasant robots assist round the home, and pc screens seem like they’re manufactured from paper. For showrunner Katie Robbins and the remainder of the manufacturing crew, designing Sunny turned a possibility to do one thing completely different within the realm of science fiction.

“It was such a tremendous deal with and problem to assume: if we might change issues in regards to the world that we dwell in, what would we modify?” Robbins explains. “How would we modify the methods we interface with our know-how?”

These variations manifest in a couple of methods. Whereas everybody in Sunny appears to hold round a telephone, for example, they’re rather a lot completely different from fashionable smartphones. Impressed by the design of Japanese lighters from the Sixties, the gadgets are curvy rectangles that may flip open to disclose a display. However hardly anybody on the present makes use of them that approach. As an alternative, they pop an AirPods-style headphone in a single ear (the telephone doubles as an earbud case) and do virtually all the pieces by way of voice.

When the characters must do one thing visually — browse search outcomes or play a multiplayer recreation — there’s a built-in projector. And when the residents of this future really work together with a show, whether or not it’s the telephone or a pc or a TV taking part in 24-hour information at a comfort retailer, the display seems prefer it’s made out of digital paper. Robbins says the shows had been all designed to seem like the shoji screens discovered in lots of Japanese houses in order that they match extra naturally into the atmosphere.

A part of what makes all of it work is that Sunny largely feels out of time. The present follows Suzie (Rashida Jones), who groups up with robotic dwelling assistant Sunny (Joanna Sotomura) to unravel the thriller of her husband Masa’s (Hidetoshi Nishijima) disappearance. It’s set in Kyoto, however when it takes place isn’t actually clear. The present is vaguely futuristic, with its plentiful robots and voice assistants that may really perceive you, however it’s additionally decidedly retro in relation to issues like trend and music. Robbins says that temporal ambiguity is intentional. “We by no means needed to particularly timestamp the present, in order that it might really feel 10 years sooner or later, 30 years sooner or later, or an alt-now,” she says. “We needed it to really feel acquainted and accessible and never futuristic in a extremely overt approach.”

Lots of the choices relating to know-how — and screens particularly — additionally got here from a sensible standpoint. “We needed to, as a lot as potential, keep away from display inserts and that type of factor, and characters continually choosing up their telephones and scrolling,” says Robbins. Having most communication occur by way of voice makes for a greater expertise for viewers, retaining the deal with the actors, however it additionally creates pressure for the present’s most important character. Suzie has lived in Japan for a decade, however due to the ever present real-time translation know-how present in her telephone, she has by no means really needed to study the language. She merely places within the earbud and carries on a dialog.

“Which is miraculous, and in some methods extremely connective and permits her to dwell in a spot the place she wouldn’t in any other case have the ability to talk with individuals,” Robbins says. “Nevertheless, there’s additionally a barrier inside that know-how. Think about when you lived in a spot the place virtually your whole interplay with individuals you had been listening to translated in your ear. Despite the fact that the know-how is bringing individuals collectively, it’s additionally making a barrier on this approach that I believe is basically fascinating.”

As for the robots, and Sunny particularly, the idea for a cute and pleasant assistant equally got here from a narrative viewpoint. Suzie is somebody with a deep-seated mistrust of know-how who can also be going via an extremely tough time with the lack of her husband and son. “What if the robotic is doubtlessly the factor that brings her out of that?” Robbins remembers considering.

After some analysis into the sphere of human-robot interplay — and dealing with the workforce at visible results powerhouse Wētā Workshop — Robbins was capable of finding a glance that each Suzie and viewers would relate to, full with a giant spherical face with large, extraordinarily expressive eyes that do a tremendous job of conveying emotion. “One thing that felt very cute, and approachable, and amiable in order that you can think about falling in love with it,” Robbins explains.

At a time when many people appear to be desperately trying to find some type of treatment to our overconnected current, there’s plenty of enchantment in Sunny’s imaginative and prescient. The bots are largely pleasant and useful whenever you want them and straightforward to disregard whenever you don’t. In the meantime, the telephones are connectivity instruments quite than attention-consuming blackholes, and folks really speak to one another (even when typically mediated via a translator). In a world of Boox Palmas, Daylight tablets, and AI instruments that depart a lot to be desired, the Sunny telephone might positively garner an viewers — which was the aim all alongside.

“That was the hope,” says Robbins. “We get the possibility to design one thing right here. Let’s design one thing that we’d need.”