It’s been a busy spring TV season already, with some of the funniest comedies of the year (Girls5eva), best reality shows (Top Chef), best documentary projects (Queens), and most excitingly cast new series (Palm Royale) all airing at the same time. But there’s one show that’s been the standard-bearer of the season, with everything from its production design to its casting operating at a level that warrants mention alongside the all-time great TV series of the past. If you’re not watching Shōgun, what are you doing?
The best compliment I can give Shōgun is that it appeals to people who never in a million years imagined they would like a series like Shōgun. I say that from experience.
Listen, I don’t think it should come as a surprise that “long and complicated action epics” are not my genre. It was torture for me to watch Game of Thrones each week, which I did just to keep up with the zeitgeist. Every minute I spent watching Westworld felt like I was getting a drawn-out lobotomy. I’m a Real Housewives and Abbott Elementary kind of guy. When I sign in to Hulu to watch the new episode of Shōgun each week, it appears in the “Continue Watching” rail alongside Will & Grace, Designing Women, and Happy Endings, all of which I’m rewatching at the moment, and all of which have nothing in common with Shōgun. And yet, the show is so good that I can’t wait for each week’s new episode.
Shōgun has a prestigious lore in pop culture history. The original 1975 novel is one of the best-selling books of all time, and was adapted into a 1980 miniseries—which is still, to date, the only American production to be filmed entirely in Japan. In order to measure up to that history, a new limited series adaptation of Shōgun was going to have to be big. It was going to have to look big. It was going to have to feel big. In other words, it would have to be the most ambitious television production since Game of Thrones, which it certainly is.
There’s an incredible scale and attention to detail that makes each frame of the series just feel sumptuous, even when scenes are meant to convey the filth and dirt of wayward British shipmen. The story itself is a literal game of thrones: a handful of Japanese regents jockey for power while awaiting the rightful heir to come of age; meanwhile, a clever English outsider arrives to upset the order in a modern world. But what has really captured my attention and kept me coming back each week is the acting. Shōgun features some of the best performances on TV right now.
Anna Sawai is a revelation. She plays Toda Mariko, a well-connected Catholic convert who serves as the translator between Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) and John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis). She’s a gorgeous actress, obviously commanding any scene she’s in. There’s such an emotional depth to her line readings as she journeys through a character who is courageous and loyal, but also incredibly vulnerable and open. The Best Actress in a Limited Series race is so often crowded with A-list American movie stars at awards shows, but her breakout turn should not be overlooked this year.
I similarly marvel at Sanada’s performance as Toranaga, who is skeptical, a little bit cheeky, and yet always regal. I wasn’t prepared for how much humor there was going to be in Shōgun, and much of that is owed to Jarvis’ turn as Blackthorne. I also am grateful for how gratuitously the series took his transformation from dirty pirate to cleaned-up renegade; every epic series needs a hottie and an unnecessary, but appreciated, butt shot. And when it comes to comedy, Nestor Carbonell is perfectly cast as a feral, swashbuckling sailor-turned-frenemy of Blackthorne’s.
The series just passed its halfway point, and is the rare project these days that doesn’t feel bloated or overlong. “Pacing” isn’t exactly the sexiest thing to talk about as a critic, but in the age of streaming series that could have been a two-hour movie that instead become eight-episode TV shows, it’s important and, often, ignored. This is all very gushy, but, hey, the show deserves to be gushed about! It’s also, apparently, a bona fide hit for FX and Hulu. I’m so used to clearing my throat as the pop-culture Lorax, speaking on behalf of small series that everyone shamefully ignores. It’s nice for there to be a major project that deserves the attention it’s getting. Everyone having taste? A strange, new phenomenon.
