BY JUDY BERMAN
TELEVISION
IT TAKES HUBRIS TO MESS WITH ONE OF THE DEFINING TV events of the 20th century. The original Shogun, a miniseries based on James Clavell’s best-selling 1975 doorstop, was a massive hit when it aired on NBC in 1980. Nearly a third of American households watched Richard Chamberlain and the iconic Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune retell the tale of an English navigator’s adventures in feudal Japan. Shogunbroke broadcast barriers with its frank depictions of sex and violence, and racked up awards. Could there possibly be a point, beyond the entertainment industry’s thirst for familiar IP, to revisiting this story in 2024?
The answer, remarkably, is yes.The new Shogun is not a remake so much as a radical reimagining. Adapted directly from Clavell’s novel, this sprawling, 10-part historical drama takes a far broader view than its predecessor, moving beyond the Western outsider’s perspective to survey a fracturing society. It’s an epic of war, love, faith, honor, culture clash, and political intrigue. And at a time when so many of TV’s biggest swings have yielded at least partial misses, FX’s Shogunstands apart as a genuine masterpiece.
The cross-cultural encounter begins in 1600, when a battered European ship emerges out of the predawn fog off the coast of a Japanese fishing village. Leading its scraggly, malnourished crew is John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), an English mariner with a keen survival instinct. Local leaders aren’t exactly pleased to receive his delegation. (One urinates on him.) Even more hostile to a ship of Protestants seeking a foothold in Japan are Portuguese Catholics who’ve already established trade and churches there.
Blackthorne soon stumbles into a crisis bigger than his own. A year after the death of the reigning Taiko,a council of regents has been set up to govern Japan until his heir is old enough to lead. One regent, war hero Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), has fallen out with the others and is threatened with impeachment. His reaction could plunge the nation into civil war.
A brilliant strategist, Toranaga knows how useful a ship containing muskets, cannons, and a “barbarian” who knows how to use them could be to him in a land where wars are waged by sword-wielding samurai. And so Blackthorne, rechristened Anjin (the Japanese word for pilot) sees their fates become inextricably entwined. Toranaga enlists Toda
