What is it about choosing a new TV show that feels so torturous?
Too much buzz paradoxically puts me off a series – “if everyone’s telling you that you must watch something, part of your brain sort of goes ‘actually maybe I won’t,'” consultant psychiatrist Dr Mosun told HuffPost UK previously.
But I’m not exactly delighted with my habit of rewatching the same five programmes, either.
Which is why, for me, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/best-austen-<a href="https://comicvibe.com/this-summer-will-be-different-netflix-adaptation-everything-we-know-so-far/” title=”'This Summer Will Be Different' Netflix Adaptation: Everything We Know So Far”>adaptation-disney_uk_6a3e7c35e4b0fe0f0075d0ca” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>finding an underrated gem offers the best of both worlds.
And according to critics, Netflix series Asura is a particularly glittering example.
Released in 2025, the seven-episode’s synopsis reads: “In 1979 Tokyo, four distinct sisters uncover their ageing father’s affair, causing their happy facades and bottled-up emotions to slowly unravel”.
Food is a force of nature in the show. Ever-present and frequently sumptous, it stands in for all kinds of moods, dynamics, hurts, and triumphs.
Each of Asura’s “strikingly beautiful” hour-long episodes contains “snappy jokes, deep intimacy, physical wrestling, meal-planning and petty but profound complaints about family dynamics,” critics say.
It’s directed by Palme d’Or-winning Hirokazu Kore-eda, and is an adaptation of a novel by Kuniko Mukôda.
Asura has earned a perfect 100% Tomatometer critic score on review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, and 94% from its audience-generated Popcornmeter.
The Guardian said the series could be “the best drama [Netflix] has put out in years,” asking, “how has it gone almost unnoticed?”.
The New York Times, meanwhile, called it the “full package: a detailed, human-scale domestic drama with plenty to say, fascinating characters to say it and the stylishness to make it sing.
“The downside is that other shows feel paltry and thin in comparison. The upside is everything else.”
For their part, Slate called Asura “the best new show of 2025,” describing it as a “compassionate yet incisive dissection of family, betrayal, and 1970s Japan”.
One note, though: Guardian writer Rebecca Nicholson saidthat for those who don’t speak Japanese, the show “urges a second watch, to catch those delicate moments you may have missed when reading the subtitles”.
A rewatch of one of the highest-rated releases on Netflix? Oh noooo…
All seven episodes of Asura are available on Netflix.
