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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
39
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
TV Guide MagazineMar 7, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Majestic. .... I never wanted to leave this world. Please, FX, never stop aiming this high. [11 - 31 Mar 2024, p.4]
Feb 28, 2024
Season 1 Review:
What makes Shōgun the limited series so exceptional is how it transforms a novel laden with lazy stereotypes and Orientalism into a sweeping saga for a modern, global audience, while remaining faithful to the text. .... In so doing, it points the way for future adaptations when dealing with problematic material—and maybe tricks some Clavell-pilled dads into watching a subtitled series, for once.
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Feb 28, 2024
Season 1 Review:
“Shōgun” is a true epic. .... It may inspire a yearning to learn more about this history. Even if it doesn’t, you may find yourself contemplating how easily we can be seduced by compelling stories about people who do terrible things to achieve noble outcomes and how little most of us matter to their ends. Only great storytelling can achieve this feat.
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The Mercury NewsFeb 28, 2024
Feb 26, 2024
Season 1 Review:
There are superficial similarities to “Game of Thrones” — five contenders for an empty throne, a storyline about two girlhood friends on opposite sides of a power struggle. But it’s this focus on people that truly unites the two series, and qualifies “Shōgun” to take up the mantle of thrillingly transportive event TV.
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Feb 26, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Shōgun is television at its best, using its budget to create a gorgeous, immersive world but never letting spectacle detract from its emphasis on complex character arcs. The performances are compelling, aided by writing that flows from crude humor to poetic drama in a way that brings depth to protagonists and even minor characters. The series seamlessly blends intrigue, humor, romance and action in a beautifully executed limited series that keeps delivering surprises until its perfect ending.
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Feb 23, 2024
Season 1 Review:
There are so many characters and plotlines introduced at a dizzying rate it might be hard at first to get your bearings. But the storytelling, led by writers and showrunners Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, moves confidently and intensely. It is often exhilarating. “Shogun” is immersive world-building, feeling at once like an old-fashioned epic and something modern in style.
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Feb 27, 2024
Season 1 Review:
There’s plenty of intrigue and potential for backstabby drama here, and as I mentioned earlier, the period accurate details are rich. The landscapes—from lush forest to dank and dirty jail cells to the great wooden palace with its central karesansui garden—are a sensory feast. The acting is awesome. But tender-hearted friends, let me warn you: It gets gory.
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Feb 26, 2024
Season 1 Review:
In the early heyday of miniseries, “Shōgun” was the show of the year in 1980, and it might be again 44 years later. FX’s updated, sumptuous version of James Clavell’s sweeping novel blends an intoxicating combination of action, romance and political intrigue, majestically spread over 10 parts that, unlike most limited series, sustain that weight and then some.
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Feb 22, 2024
Feb 28, 2024
Season 1 Review:
Whenever things seem like they’re about to slow down to the point where fickle viewers might log on to social media to complain that they don’t understand the plot, a volley of flaming arrows flutters through the air or a sliding door splatters with blood. But it’s equally impressive how often the filmmakers keep you on the edge of your seat wondering if a character will keep their mouth shut.
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The TelegraphFeb 27, 2024
Season 1 Review:
At times it feels too dense – too much talking about feudal politics when there should be more action. .... But the production looks magnificent. And the strength of Shōgun is the way it immerses us in a world that, with its rituals and violence, feels as foreign to us as it does to Blackthorne. This is not a series for the lily-livered, and is all the better for that.
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The IndependentFeb 27, 2024
Season 1 Review:
With more sex and violence than the service’s usual fare, it’s an ambitious deviation. But this well-paced and considered saga will reward grown-up viewers and prove that there’s still room for a historical epic among the elves, dragons and zombies of big-budget telly.
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Feb 26, 2024
Season 1 Review:
It is sumptuously produced, mostly well acted and not excessively sentimental or sensational. If its story seems to stop and start a bit, there are reasons for that, which become clear in a satisfying and moving ending; if there are major characters who don’t stand up to scrutiny, there are others who come alive and hold your interest. It may not live up to its hype, and it may leave you wondering why so much time (more than a decade) and money needed to be spent reanimating Clavell’s tale. But it delivers.
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Feb 23, 2024
Season 1 Review:
"Shōgun" has the look of money all over it—meaning it is visually lush, bountiful and believable; there is action aplenty, fountains of blood and enough characters to populate a fishing village. But the narrative engine is essentially political: How is Toranaga going to thwart the designs of the other Regents, specifically Ishido (Takehiro Hira), and do so with the assistance of Blackthorne.
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Feb 7, 2024
Season 1 Review:
The decision to use Mariko and Toranaga as central characters alongside Blackthorne, who was the sole protagonist of both the book and the acclaimed 1980 TV adaptation, is an effective way to avoid the “white savior” tropes that the tale dances with. And it’s ultimately the thing that makes this Shōgun more than another elegantly staged historical drama, using three distinct perspectives to turn it into rumination on life and death.
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ColliderFeb 7, 2024
Season 1 Review:
[Hiroyuki Sanada] is certainly an integral part, but his brilliance is frequently filtered through another character who emerges as the main protagonist despite being a pawn in the broader game being played. While this has its purpose and can’t detract from how spectacular Sanada is in every scene he gets, it does make a show that should have been great into one that is mostly good based on the eight episodes made available for review.
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Feb 26, 2024
Season 1 Review:
His [Blackthorne's] journey toward “enlightenment” and his unconvincing affair with Mariko are thinly sketched—and, because “Shōgun” is at pains to foreground the regents’ war, he has more to offer the narrative as a source of discord and of new martial technology than as a romantic hero. In theory, elevating Mariko and Toranaga to primary characters is the “correct” update, helping to avoid another “whitewashed” tale about Japan. But both are so bound by repression and secrecy that they’re almost doomed to be dramatically inert.
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