• Network: FX
  • Series Premiere Date: Feb 27, 2024
Metascore
85

Universal acclaim - based on 41 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 39 out of 41
  2. Negative: 0 out of 41

Critic Reviews

  1. Reviewed by: Ed Power
    Feb 27, 2024
    60
    It picks up speed eventually, and its battle scenes are both exquisite and gory. But out of the gate, it can feel like taking the slow boat to nowhere.
  2. Reviewed by: Inkoo Kang
    Feb 26, 2024
    50
    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.