"Drops of God," "Dead Ringers," "Cunk On Earth," "Tiny Beautiful Things," more on "The Diplomat" and some dangerous ideas.

Some stuff to dabble in, surely.

A while ago a friend in the business sent me the upcoming trailer for “Drops of God,” the Apple TV+ series based on a super popular manga book about wine. If ever there was a natural fit, she said, this is it. I watched the trailer and it was…pretty horrible? A couple of weeks later my friend and wine guru Dan (who also happens to be a filmmaker and a Fulbright scholar among his multitudes) saw the trailer and essentially said, “We need to do a podcast about this.”

He’s not wrong. But it was too late — the show was coming up quickly, life was getting complicated and he was about to leave to discover yet more amazing wine in Europe — because he has the better life. So we had to hit the snooze button on that, but I decided to watch the first episode because, well, I’m a hero unafraid of watching things I have an inkling won’t work and it’s not as if I trust trailers. Still, I went into it with hopes low.

Let me allow a precursor before my finished thought — there was a 20 second scene near the end of the first episode that raised a huge red flag, so whatever I say next I can circle back on in the future and note that I was dubious. And yet — AND YET — I loved the first episode of “Drops of God,” which stuns me more than it will you, trust me.

But it had so many of the things I love — on top of being self-assured, creatively nimble and 99 percent unlike the trailer: The show is in French, Japanese and English, wanders between Paris and Tokyo, has enigmatic characters that draw you in and, for me at least, has a thoroughly unexpected visual approach that features modern design and furniture. I know, right? AND IT’S ABOUT WINE. Who crawled into my brain and made a show for me?