Missing Shōgun? The 10 epic dramas to watch next
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The sun has set on Shōgun, Disney+’s stirring adaptation of James Clavell’s classic novel about an Englishman who sails to feudal Japan and is caught up in a brutal struggle between warring factions. Despite a slow start and few concessions to those whose attention spans have been shredded by social media, the series has been widely acclaimed as the best swords ’n’ skulduggery epic to reach the small screen since Game of Thrones – with the bonus that, unlike Thrones, it doesn’t all fall apart at the end.
Great – so a second season is guaranteed then? Sadly, that appears unlikely. While Clavell has set an entire sequence of books in pre-industrial Japan, the tale told in Shōgun has a clearly delineated beginning, middle and end. To try to stretch it out would be as ludicrous as Amazon spending billions on a prequel to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings that nobody asked for – who would do something so absurd?
“The story is complete,” showrunner Justin Marks has said. “It’s hard because you don’t have a master storyteller to set the map for you. So [a second series] would be a tough one.”
Don’t throw your katana away in anger just yet, however. We may have said “sayōnara” to Shōgun but there are plenty of other Clavell-esque capers out there. Here’s 10 to get you started.
1. Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan (Netflix)
Covering the same historical period as Shōgun, this hybrid of talking heads documentary and dramatised re-enactment has more feuding samurai than you could shake a huge curved sword at. Taking up the story in 1550, it chronicles the terrible conflict of the Sengoku period – the so-called age of Warring States that likewise serves as the backdrop to Shōgun. And while Shōgun is largely fictional (if loosely based on actual events), the bloody tale told here is entirely real, making for the perfect companion piece.
2. Giri/Haji (Netflix)
A Japanese-British story about an outsider caught up in a war between feuding dynasties? The parallels between Giri/Haji and Shōgun are clear. The big difference is that Giri/Haji is set in the present day and traces a reverse journey, with Takehiro Hira playing a Tokyo cop who goes to London in search of his missing brother and is caught in the middle of a conflict between criminal gangs. There are fewer swords than in Shōgun, though with much of the action taking place in Japan, fans of the Far East setting will lap it up.
3. The Last Kingdom (Netflix)
For those who enjoyed Shōgun’s bloody action scenes and enthusiastic back-stabbing (figurative and otherwise), the BBC’s adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Stories is sure to delight. It’s 866, and England has been overrun by the Great Heathen Army. They sound as if they should be headlining Donington but are, in fact, a Viking horde straight outta Denmark. All that stands in their way is King Alfred and his armies – aided by Uhtred, a Saxon raised by the Danes.
4. The Terror (Prime Video)
Before Shōgun’s hero John Blackthorne reaches Japan, we see him on Dutch ship The Erasmus, where everybody is going slowly mad after months of sea. If the idea of stiff-upper-lipped explorers losing their sanity after too long cooped up together appeals, then the show to watch is season one of The Terror, adapted from Dan Simmons’s chilling fictionalised account of the doomed Franklin expedition to uncover the Northwest Passage in 1845. Series two, meanwhile, has an explicit Japanese theme and follows a Japanese-American family interned by the US Army after Pearl Harbour.
5. Black Sails (Prime Video)
Yo, ho, ho… and a bottle of fun. If it’s whiskery sailors having adventures in fair-flung waters ye be after, you can’t do better than this prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Black Sails isn’t subtle – then, what would you expect of a show executive-produced by Transformers director Michael Bay? Toby Stephens plays Captain Flint, while Luke Arnold is his quartermaster, “Long” John Silver. Many real-life pirates, including Blackbeard and Anne Bonny, appear in fictionalised form. It’s available for rental on Prime Video and Apple TV.
6. Barbarians (Netflix)
Much of the dialogue in Shōgun is subtitled, and if you can handle that, then you’ll have no problem with this German TV show about the Roman Empire’s occupation of Germania and the rebellion of the chieftain Arminius in 9 AD. It’s a long way from Germany to Japan – but the two shows share a fascination with political manoeuvring punctuated by sudden explosions of violence.
7. Vikings (Netflix)
The historical epic to rule them all, this show has led to a resurgence of interest in Viking culture, as demonstrated by the popularity of bands such as experimental folk musicians Heilung and video games like Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Its early seasons tell the story of Ragnar Lodbrok, a warlord who led raids on England and France. Spin-off Vikings: Valhalla fast-forwards 100 years and chronicles tensions between Vikings and the native English – and a rift back in Scandinavia between those who continue to believe in the old gods and converts to Christianity.
8. Kingdom (Netflix)
This Korean chiller is set in the same early 16th-century time period as Shōgun. But it is altogether more gory and fantastical and depicts a Korea overrun by terrifying hordes of zombies. There’s a lot of lavish historical detail – the traditional “gat” hats are amazing, for one thing – but, at its core, Kingdom is a horror story with swords.
9. Blue Eye Samurai (Netflix)
The gorgeous Netflix cartoon takes place in Japan’s Edo period, a centuries-long time of relative peace during which Japan closed itself to the outside world (following on immediately from the Sengoku period covered in Shōgun). Maya Erskine voices Mizu, a mixed-race Samurai, on the trail of four white men (including her father) who have remained illegally in Japan after the shuttering of the borders.
10. Tokyo Vice (Amazon Prime/Apple TV +)
Ansel Elgort plays an American journalist who teams up with Ken Watanabe’s organised crime detective as they try to take down the Yakuza who run the Tokyo underworld. Based on the true experiences of writer Jake Adelstein, the show has the same Westerner-in-Japan vibe mined so rewardingly by Shōgun, though you’ll have to pay to rent individual episodes on Amazon Prime or Apple TV.
