If you have ever wondered what starving sailors riddled with scurvy might look like after months at sea, Shōgun will not keep you in suspense. From the outset, this is gruesome stuff, set amid the emerging threat of civil war in Japan in 1600. It adapts James Clavell’s classic 1975 novel with ambition and evident respect for its source material, and given that the paperback is more than 1,000 pages long, it is extraordinary that they have managed to condense it into 10 episodes. The result is peacocking, mesmerising television.
Much like Masters of the Air, Shōgun has been years in the making. It was first announced in 2018 and like Masters of the Air, it has been well worth the wait. This is lavish, demanding drama, to be approached with care and focus. It is largely in Japanese, partly in English, which stands in for Portuguese, at times – this is not as hard to follow as you might think – but it is not the kind of series you can watch in the background as you scroll on a second screen. Sit down, strap in and pay close attention.
