Thinking back to television when I was a kid – that is, the early 1980s in Switzerland -, I mainly remember these: German entertainment shows featuring all the beige in the world, the cheesy US series of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, the likes of Simon & Simon and Knight Rider, and the Japanese anime adaptations of (mostly) European children’s literature, from Heidi to Pinocchio. Just as much as the daily and weekly fare, though, I remember the ‘prestige television’ of the time: the big miniseries that featured impressive casts and that by and large were concerned with more mature themes. I remember these being something of a family event that we’d gather in front of the TV to watch: Roots, Fatal Vision (starring Karl Malden, that big-nosed embodiment of integrity), the German Das Boot (which I’ll always think of as a miniseries, since I don’t think I ever saw the original cinema edit). To pre-teen me, these felt excitingly like grown-up television, and while I would probably not have put it like that at the time, they felt so much less generic and more ambitious than the ongoing series I was otherwise watching at the time.
I still have fond memories of many of these miniseries – so when FX announced its adaptation of James Clavell’s novel Shogun, it was first and foremost the 1980s series that came to mind, starring Richard Chamberlain, that early ‘80s embodiment of romantic masculinity, and a regal Toshiro Mifune. Was it good TV? For the time, I’d say it certainly was, and when I rewatched it a few years ago out of curiosity, I found a series that was undoubtedly dated but that still had a lot going for it. That first TV adaptation was definitely a child of its time, much like the novel it was based on, but I did wonder: what would a 21st-century remake (if that was indeed the right term, but that’s a discussion for another time) bring to the table, other than better special effects, up-to-date production values, and actors that might be more familiar to present-day audiences? Would it still tell the same story, by and large, of John Blackthorne, an English navigator shipwrecked in early 17th century Japan who becomes entangled in the political intrigues, or would it take the bare bones of the story to do something different?
There are many differences both big and small between the two adaptations of Shogun that are only partly due to when the two series were made. 21st century television can be more explicit when it comes to sex and violence, and the 2024 version is clearly post-Game of Thrones TV – though it never revels in depicting these elements of the story as graphically as the HBO series did, using them more sparingly to maximise their effect when there is a scene that benefits from being explicit. Many of the differences are due to the way the actors portray their characters: Cosmo Jarvis’ John Blackthorne is a fairly different, much more idiosyncratic character from Richard Chamberlain’s version, though both are interpretations of the same material. The same is true for most of the other characters, though the cast is generally charismatic, engaging and nuanced in their performances. Overall, there was a more mannered feel to the 1980s Shogun that at times can tip into the acting feeling wooden, where the 2024 version comes across as more believably restrained, especially in the depiction of Japanese nobility – but it is not unlikely that this will feel equally dated in another 44 (!) years. Acting styles change considerably over time, and it can sometimes be quite disconcerting to revisit a film or series watched a few decades ago and realising that we considered realistic, and therefore somehow timeless, acting at the time now feels very much like a historically specific time. What helps the performances of the 2024 Shogun, though, is that there is a fitting sense of differentness to them that comes with the historical setting that is reminiscent of the HBO series Rome and the ways in which it made its distant past feel truly distant. Regardless of whether the performances in FX’s Shogun will feel similarly quaint and dated in a few dozen years as Richard Chamberlain’s acting does to contemporary audiences, they are perfectly suited to this 21st century interpretation of the material, with Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada, as commanding as Mifune was in the earlier adaptation), Mariko (Anna Sawai) and the scheming Yabushige (a hugely enjoyable Tadanobu Asana) standing out in particular, in addition to Jarvis’ wonderfully idiosyncratic take on the Anjin-San.
The most noteworthy change is the way the series uses language, which makes for a fascinating difference in the way the two adaptations use perspective. The older version of Shogun makes a point of letting us see historical Japan through the eyes of John Blackthorne – and, perhaps more importantly, hearing it through his ears. Japanese characters speak their own language, but we don’t get subtitles, so the characters, their drives and their schemes often remain alien to us. While this was an effective narrative strategy at the time, it kept the characters native to Japan at arm’s length and fundamentally unknowable unless they found other ways of expressing themselves. The FX adaptation makes the seemingly small change of subtitling Japanese dialogue, which allows us to spend more time with the Japanese characters. Some of the series’ best scenes are the ones where Mariko translates for Blackthorne, and the subtitles allow us to pick up on what is changed, left out or added. We come to understand the act of translation as an intentional, directed, and very active one, revealing as much about Mariko as the intermediary as about the people she is translating for. And even though we understand all characters thanks to the subtitles, the cultural differences are still more than enough to show the audience how Blackthorne finds himself a stranger in a strange land, but we also gain an understanding of characters that in the earlier adaptation had remained opaque. In that sense, the 2024 version of Shogun lets its audience see both the culture shock Blackthorne experiences and gain a better understanding of the culture that prompts this shock.
It is this double vision and the way FX’s Shogun leverages it in its storytelling that is the series’ greatest asset – but yes, the production values and potential of modern visual effects shouldn’t be forgotten. The old Shogun was gorgeous for its time, but the new version evokes a world in images that are gorgeous for their colour, contrast and texture. The cinematography of the FX series is painterly especially in its night scenes, which do a fantastic job of having candles and fires reveal what is important while using inky blacks to create negative space. (I hope that the series will come out on 4K Blu-ray, since nighttime scenes generally fare better in a less compressed medium than in streaming formats.) The costumes are gorgeous, but they are also used effectively to show us things about the characters, visually underlining their personalities. Also, the battle scenes are raw and powerful in ways that a TV production from 1980 rarely can be, and CGI effects are used effectively, especially in depicting the destructive power of nature in one stand-out episode.
In 2024, miniseries no longer stand out as much next to regular TV as they did in the 1980s. Big-name actors pop up in many a series, and mature, complex themes are not exceptional any more. There is a conversation to be had about so-called ‘prestige television’ at this point, with prestige sometimes seeming a selling point, and a self-serving one at that, that has little to do with quality. A series such as FX’s Shogun no longer stands out as immediately and clearly as its predecessor did in 1980: we’ve seen these kinds of stories, characters, production values. But the second adaptation of Shogun does stand out for being smart, beautifully crafted television storytelling. It takes material that could feel dated and plays to its strengths while bringing a present-day sensitivity to it in how it depicts a time and a culture that could easily have been flattened into some exoticised ‘Other’, without losing any of the cultural richness inherent in the material. In 2024, Shogun may not so much stand out for the story it tells – but it certainly stands out for how well it does it. There is a joy in watching a story told as well, as engagingly as this – even after decades of television that purports to be prestige.
And there is even more joy in watching a series tell a story that isn’t unfinished by design: Shogun was designed as a miniseries (or a Limited Series, as I guess the cool 21st century kids call it), and it covers the plot of Clavell’s original novel – but based on the success of the series, FX is now envisaging a second and a third season. The world they’ve evoked with their adaptation definitely feels like it could contain more stories, about Lord Toranaga, the Anjin-san John Blackthorne. And even if these future stories of early 17th century Japan and of the ‘barbarian’ (as many of the Japanese characters insist on calling Blackthorne and his fellow Westerners) don’t live up to the series we got so far, they won’t take away from a modern adaptation of the novel that combines the strengths of the past and those of the present into a compelling package that more than justifies its existence 44 years after Richard Chamberlain first set foot on the shores of Japan.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 
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