TV Show Review: Shogun (2024)

The story occurs in the early 1600s, based roughly on the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. At that point in history, Japan was emerging from self-imposed isolation. The Portuguese were the only European power with a presence there, and the main character, John Blackthorn is part of a privateering crew whose job it is to harry the Portuguese. He shipwrecks in Japan with many of the crew. As the only remaining officer, he is singled out for special attention.
 
So, it's a classic stranger in a strange land story. He's alone, isolated, and the only people he can even speak with consider him an enemy pirate and heretic. John Blackthorn might as well be on an alien planet, so wide is the culture gap between Japan and England. Blackthorn is used mostly as a camera for the Japanese battle for succession; the previous sovereign dies and his male heir is a toddler, so there's tons of palace intrigue and jockeying for position with all the attendant questions about who gets to speak for the young heir.
 
Despite having no salient part of the larger power play, Blackthorn's life is engaging at first. We watch him struggle with language, culture, and Japanese Catholics who are prejudiced against Protestants like Blackthorn. They even manage to build a bit of a love story into it for John.
 
I spent the entire show waiting for Blackthorn to evolve, to become…something. Despite being in Japan for a couple of years, his Japanese never really reaches a serviceable level. In the first few episodes, I held out hope, but he just never grew (which lovers of the novel will tell you is a crime). For most of the episodes, it doesn't matter because he's a camera and there's plenty to see through his eyes. But I got this growing sense of annoyance as the series went on and he remained stagnant while the political events of Japan evolved around him. It was odd. The one truly poignant scene they gave Blackthorn was in the final episode: a private memorial at sea in a row boat with a Japanese woman. His Japanese was so crappy that it just ruined the whole thing. They essentially have Blackthorn live down to a Japanese stereotype of a barbarian foreigner: passionate, clumsy, witless, slow to learn, rude, and stubborn. And that almost-great scene is the last one he has. As infuriating as that was, it got worse.
 
In the final episode, we don't learn what happens to Blackthorn. Toranaga muses about what might happen to him, but nothing else. We don't learn what happens to Toranaga. Does he become shogun? They don't say. What happens to the Catholics at court? They don't say. What happens to any of the political operators that you might have built an interest in? They don't say. It was the most fundamentally flawed last episode of a TV series I've ever watched. I've seen canceled shows do hurried wrap-up final episodes that were more cogent than the way they ended this series.
 
So, I would save you from all that annoyance. Don't watch the show. It does a lot of great setup with fantastic settings and period costumes and then proceeds to waste it all.