The Best Acting on TV R ight Now Is on ‘Shōgun’

This Week

You should be catching up on Shōgun.

Beyoncé’s album has arrived!

A fascinating new psychodrama.

Kelly Clarkson did it again.

The best joke on TV right now?

Shōgun Is So Good

It’s been a busy spring TV season, with some of the funniest shows of the year (Girls5eva), best reality shows (Top Chef), best documentary series (Queens), and most excitingly cast new series (Palm Royale) all airing at the same time. But there’s one series that’s been the standard bearer of the season, with everything from its production design to its casting operating at a level that warrants mention alongside the all-time great TV series of the past. If you’re not watching Shōgun, what are you doing?

The best compliment I can give Shōgun is that it appeals to people who never in a million years imagine they would like a series like Shōgun. I say that from my experience.

Listen, I don’t think it should come as a surprise that “long and complicated action epics” are not my genre. It was torture for me to watch Game of Throneseach week, which I did just to keep up with the zeitgeist. Every minute I spent watching Westworld felt like I was receiving a drawn-out lobotomy. I’m a Real Housewives and Abbott Elementary kind of guy. When I sign on to Hulu to watch the new episode of Shōgun each week, it appears in the “Continue Watching” rail alongside Will & Grace, Designing Women, and Happy Endings, all of which I’m rewatching at the moment, and all of which have nothing in common with Shōgun. And yet, the show is so good that I can’t wait for each week’s new episode.

Shōgun has a prestigious lore in pop culture history. The original 1975 novel is one of the bestselling books of all time, and was adapted into a 1980 miniseries—which is still, to date, the only American production to be filmed entirely in Japan. In order to measure up to that history, a new limited series adaptation of Shōgun was going to have to be big. It was going to have to look big. It was going to have to feel big. In other words, it would have to be the most ambitious television production since Game of Thrones, which the series certainly is.

There’s an incredible scale and attention to detail that makes each frame of the series just feel sumptuous, even when scenes are meant to convey the filth and dirt of wayward British shipmen. The story itself is a literal game of thrones: a handful of Japanese regents jockey for power while awaiting the rightful heir come of age; meanwhile, a clever English outsider arrives to upset the order in a modern world. But what has really captured my attention and kept me coming back each week is the acting. Shōgun features some of the best performances on TV right now.

Anna Sawai is a revelation. She plays Toda Mariko, a well-connected Catholic convert who serves as the translator between Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) and John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis). She’s a gorgeous actress, obviously commanding any scene she’s in. There’s such an emotional depth to her line readings as she journeys through a character who is courageous and loyal, but also incredibly vulnerable and open. The Best Actress in a Limited Series race is so often crowded with A-list American movie stars at award shows, but her breakout turn should not be overlooked.

I similarly marvel at Sanada’s performance as Toranaga, who is skeptical, a little bit cheeky, and yet always regal. I wasn’t prepared for how much humor there was going to be in Shōgun, and much of that is owed to Jarvis’ turn as Blackthorne. I also am grateful for how gratuitously the series took his transformation from dirty pirate to cleaned up renegade; every epic series needs a hottie and an unnecessary, but appreciated, butt shot. And when it comes to comedy, Nestor Carbonell is perfectly cast as a feral, swashbuckling sailor-turned-frenemy of Blackthorne’s.

The series just passed its half-way point, and is the rare project these days that doesn’t feel bloated or overlong. “Pacing” isn’t exactly the sexiest thing to talk about as a critic, but in the age of streaming series that could have been a two-hour movie that instead become eight-episode TV shows, it’s important and, often, ignored. This is all very gushy, but, hey, the show deserves to be gushed about! It’s also, apparently, a bonafide hit for FX and Hulu. I’m so used to clearing my throat as the pop-culture Lorax, speaking on behalf of small series that everyone shamefully ignores. It’s nice for there to be a major project that deserves the attention it’s getting. Everyone having taste? A strange, new phenomenon.

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I Can’t Stop Listening to “Ya Ya”

It’s a little wild how all pop culture writing about Beyoncé inevitably escalates into laughable hyperbole. I have no interest in contributing to that when it comes to the release of Cowboy Carter, quite simply the greatest album that’s ever been made and which is poised to change the music, the human race, and the world as we know it.

It is, of course, impressive how cleverly Beyoncé called on her country roots and made an album that feels familiar and of the genre, yet entirely, singularly her. It’s bold to incorporate so many samples and classic songs—everything from Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” and Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Were Made for Walking” to Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide”—and unabashedly transform them in her voice and style, all while never disrespecting the legacy of the music and the artists.

The tracks with those samples are the highlights of Cowboy Carter: Beyoncé’s “Jolene” cover and her duet “II Most Wanted” with Miley Cyrus, who has never sounded better. But let’s be real: If you didn’t press play on “Ya Ya,” hear the opening to “These Boots…” and let out an involuntarily, completely necessary, “Oh hell yessssss,” then I’m not sure what’s happened to your soul, or if it’s even worth saving.

The song didn’t blow my hair back so much as it removed it all in one fell swoop of a sonic blast. Beyoncé’s voice is like a flame torch on the track, which moves from bouncy and flirty to explosive and ebullient. The chorus, which loosely translates to “get the hello off your ass and dance,” is irresistible, with cheeky directives like “fuck it, we shakin’,” “we swimmin’,” “we jerkin’,” and “we twerkin’”—all of which we will be doing the second we’re able to get to a bar where the song is rightfully blasting. The thought of Beyoncé performing it live is so thrilling, I’m not sure I’d be able to handle it.

Yes, this is all very fawning. But so what? It’s just fun for there to be something that was so anticipated to come out and be this good. Fuck it, we shakin’.

Femme Is Fascinating

There’s a movie that I screened this past week that I can’t stop thinking about. My opinion of it has changed roughly a dozen times, which has led me to the conclusion that any movie that provokes in that way must be really damn good.

Femme, which is now playing in New York and Los Angeles before expanding Apr. 5, is a tense, erotic, and oftentimes unnerving queer psychodrama. George MacKay plays Preston, a hustler in London who violently attacks a drag queen, Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett). after he jokingly insinuates that Preston is gay. Jules, then, is shocked when, months later, he spots Preston at a gay sauna known for cruising.

The film then becomes a sexually charged revenge thriller, with Jules first hooking up with Preston, who doesn’t recognize them from the attack, before the two begin having sweet dates, sex all over London, and, seemingly, begin to fall for each other. Or are they? The ambiguity being the sweetness, romance, and vengeance keeps the film constantly surprising and stressful. It’s unlike any queer film I’ve seen.

Another Week, Another Kelly Clarkson Triumph

Kelly Clarkson’s talent for covering other artists’ songs on her talk show and then pulling out vocal acrobatics that leave the original is dust is well-known at this point. (Katy Perry recently posted “OK dang I can never sing that again” on a video of Clarkson’s cover of “Wide Awake.”)

All of the covers are good. Some are really good. And this one is transcendent. Clarkson’s rendition of Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie is out of this world, having me hearing and thinking about the song in a wholly different way. Watch it here.

The Best Joke on TV

I just finished rewatching the new season of Girls5eva, and are we ready to proclaim the button at the end of the theme song—“So what are you waiting five?”—to be the best sitcom joke of the last three years? It’s so good.

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Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show: As surprising and fascinating as you’d expect from the comedian. (Fri. on HBO)

A Gentleman in Moscow: Ewan McGregor in a mustache goes a long way to make a series worth watching. (Sun. on Showtime)

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Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2: No one in the Hundred Acre Wood deserved this. (Now in theaters)

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