Miss Succession? Shogun is a must-watch epic drama

Can you name the last five shows you watched? Were they series that stuck with you? Or were they churn-and-burn one-night stands? Was the plotting layered and borderline confusing, and were there at least 10 people in the topline cast? Or was it compact and suburban, with two leads and a supporting cast of maybe five people?

Was it in any way memorable? Were there sandals, swords and complex world building? If the answer is no to all of the above, the cure is a dose of epic television, preferably with some scenes so dark you’ll struggle to see what’s going on.

Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga in Shogun.Credit: Kurt Iswarienko / FX

Ever since Game of Thrones ended in 2019, we’ve been looking for the next Game of Thrones. The kind of show that’s epic in scale, plotting and execution (and that includes a willingness to bump off big-name characters). You know, TV that has the “phwoar” factor.

The actual next Game of Thrones, the prequel House of the Dragons, wasn’t it, while 3 Body Problem, the Netflix adaptation of the Chinese sci-fi novel of the same name by the creators of Game of Thrones, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, comes close, but still isn’t it.

Amazon’s billion-dollar series Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power was another pretender – go on, I dare you to tell me what happened – despite the presence of elves, swords and a hobbit (sans sandals).

Emilia Clarke and Kit Harington in the final season of Game of Thrones.

Of course, this isn’t to say Game of Thrones was perfect. Its treatment of women was often highly problematic, particularly in the first few seasons, with nudity and sexual violence casually bandied about with little recrimination. Through the show’s eight seasons, women often had very little power, even though the ending balanced that out. Book nerds complained about the ending, but it was fine. For once, it was the women who ended up on top.

Cosmo Jarvis chews the scenery – in a good way – as English sailor John Blackthorne in Shogun.

So what is it? What is the next great epic series?

May I present the case for Shogun? Yes, it’s officially a limited series, but it’s the epic we need right now. It has swords and sandals (waraji) and multi-layered plotting, with rival dynasties, strong women and a performance at its centre that is so unhinged it’s hard to look away. For bonus points, a sailor is boiled alive during episode one, while a bloody scene featuring cannons quite literally does not miss.

It’s also been name-checked by George R.R. Martin, who said he drew inspiration from the complex plotting of James Clavell’s 1975 historical epic about an English sailor stranded in feudal Japan when he was writing Game of Thrones.

Anna Sawai plays Lady Mariko, Blackthorne’s translator, in Shogun.

Set in 1600s Japan, Shogun sets itself up as a game of thrones: A council of five regents has been tasked to keep the peace after the death of the sovereign. His heir is still underage, but a power struggle between Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) and Lord Ishido Kazunari (Takehiro Hira) begins to simmer.

Into this friction comes John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), an English sailor who is taken prisoner when his ship is wrecked on the Japanese coast. He has little regard for the Japanese “savages” or the Portuguese Christians who have been trading out of Osaka.

They, in turn, think him an idiot but a useful one, and he becomes a pawn in the battle between Toranaga and Ishido. To make use of Blackthorne, he is appointed a translator, Mariko (Anna Sawai), who provides counsel to Toranaga. Throw in a double-dealing general, Kashigi Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano), a cocky son, Yoshii Nagakado (Yuki Kura), a jealous husband/samurai Buntaro (Shinnosuke Abe) and Blackthorne’s masterful consort Usami Fuji (Moeka Hoshi), and it’s a thrilling, high-stakes and, yes, funny series that rockets along and requires the viewer to keep up. Nothing is handed to you on a plate, you’re expected to keep up and work it out. Which, frankly, is what good TV should be.

When you consider the show’s origins, none of this is a surprise. Clavell was a master plotter, a writer who was not afraid of tangled, complicated stories. The 1980 miniseries adaptation took its blockbuster credentials seriously and along with Roots it heralded the golden age of the miniseries. According to Nielson ratings at the time, about 32 per cent of US households watched at least one episode.

It won the Emmy and Golden Globe for best series and launched Richard Chamberlain, who played Blackthorne, into his “phwoar” era when he starred as the original Hot Priest in another 1980s blockbuster The Thorn Birds.

The original Shogun miniseries was not without its problems: putting aside the whole “white saviour” notion, its biggest misstep was that none of the Japanese dialogue was subtitled, with the producers reasoning that if John Blackthorne couldn’t understand the Japanese, then why should the audience.

This modern adaptation, by Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, gives the Japanese characters more weight than the original, provides subtitles for the Japanese dialogue, and turns Blackthorne into less of a white saviour and more of a buffoon, stumbling his way through a more advanced and elegant culture.

As Blackthorne, Jarvis chews the scenery, but it works. He is your backpacker nightmare: thrashing around in a culture he doesn’t understand, and wondering why he needs to take a bath more than twice a week. The Japanese cast are excellent – as Yabushige, Tadanobu Asano just about steals the show, while Moeka Hoshi as Fuji grows ever more confident and powerful.

Shogun is epic television as it should be. Wild plotting, complex characters and a real sense that you don’t quite know where it’s going, but you’re happy to stay for the ride. And sandals, lots of sandals.

Shogun is now streaming on Disney+.

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