Highly Recommend That You Watch Shogun
An English navigator becomes both a player and pawn in the complex political games in feudal Japan.
Starring Richard Chamberlain as Anjin-san and the ever wonderful Toshiro Mifune as Lord Yoshi Toranaga and with John Rhys-Davies as Vasco Rodriguez (You know him as Gimli from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy) it would be ridiculously hard for this TV mini series to be bad! They’re just such good actors…
You’ll follow the story of John Blackthorne (Anjin-san), an English ship pilot, and his landing in Japan. His ship being seized, he must adjust from being a dirty European to becoming one of Lord Toranaga’s most trusted advisers. Whether he’ll ever get his ship back and go home, you’ll just have to see.
James Clavell based the character of John Blackthorne on Will Adams, a real-life English sea captain and adventurer, whose experiences in late 16th-century Japan are paralleled by Clavell’s story. – IMDB Trivia
Anyways, at a run time of almost 600 minutes (10 hours) Shogun isn’t a full on TV series, but it’s also too long to be a TV movie. It’s this strange middle ground younger people haven’t experienced since this format doesn’t seem to happen very often in modern shows… But in the 80’s there seemed to be a few of them (Shaka is another example.) Be prepared for some binge watching.
The violence in this show is cheesy 1980’s violence, not gory. Some nudity, sex, and cursing.
Language: English
Actors: Richard Chamberlain, Toshiro Mifune, John Rhys-Davies, Yoko Shimada, Furanki Sakai