As befits a story in which war looms like a dark shadow, the mighty Korean-Japanese epic Pachinko (Apple TV+) takes no prisoners when it comes to feeding its audience. Although it’s been nearly two and a half years since we left Sunja (Kim Min-ha) and her extended family shocked by the threat of America’s annihilation, the second season plunges us right back into the heart of the action.

It’s a bold move. The plot threads from Min Jin Lee’s novel – the timeline between war-torn Osaka in 1945 and Tokyo’s burgeoning financial scene in 1989 – are slowly pieced together without any easy explanation. There’s no catering for newcomers to the story.

But it’s worth sticking with the weekly episodes (no binge-watching here), because this is sophisticated storytelling with an uncanny ability to penetrate both head and heart with its sharp insights into the human condition. Although this is a story about the Korean diaspora, its themes of racism, oppression, love and loyalty feel entirely universal.

Another theme must be added to this list: the toxicity of secrets. Like a time bomb, the tension around Sunja’s son Noa, who discovers his father’s true identity, is ticking like a time bomb in this second season. In terms of plot, this is a classic soap opera, but here it is the unifying factor in a story in which all the characters are elegantly fitted together like a puzzle.

It’s a perfect portrayal of a mother and son grappling with the seesaws of life’s shifting balance. But even their scenes are outdone by Sunja’s earlier encounters with the effortlessly enigmatic Koh Hansu (Lee Min-ho, a Hollywood idol through and through), the handsome gangster who is harder to banish from her life than Japanese knotweed.

The flame that blazes between these two, even though their encounters are sporadic, lights sparks in a story that, as it moves to 1980s Tokyo, gets a little bogged down in the mechanics of financial corruption. It’s the personal stories that make Pachinko special, not the oriental twist on Wall Street, and when it returns to that, it’s on safer ground.

In fact, I could have spent an entire series following Sunja and her family in the halcyon days of their wartime evacuation to the Japanese countryside. The comic adventures of Sunja’s young son Mosazu and the budding attraction of Sunja’s sister-in-law Kyunghee (Jung Eun-chae) and Koh Hansu’s assassin Mr. Kim (Kim Sung-kyu) bring a welcome touch of light and shade to a story that often touches on the dark side of human nature.

Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated than with Solomon (Jin Ha), Sunja’s grandson, who suddenly finds himself swimming with the sharks in Tokyo’s deadly financial waters. Solomon is a good man in bad company, and his integrity is threatened by a thirst for revenge that he cannot resist. He, too, harbors a secret that will burn his soul.

“Don’t forget who you are,” his world-weary grandmother scolds, a soundbite that could easily serve as the slogan of this impressive and moving drama.

Episode one of the second season of Pachinko is now available on Apple TV+, with weekly episodes to follow