Shōgun | Domo arigato, Mister Hugo!

Honestly, I had zero, zero desire to watch the miniseries. Shogun from the Disney+ platform, adapted from the novel by James Clavell published in 1975.

Old samurai who grumble in Japanese, like in an RBO sketch, before sticking a sword in their belly? Arrrgh! No thanks. Hugo-san will pass his turn, despite the rave reviews that showered this ambitious historical saga when it was released last winter.

Then, Shogun garnered 25 nominations—more than any other series—ahead of the Emmy Awards gala on Sunday, September 15, and, like Isabelle Boulay in 1995, I put my prejudices away in a closet, the key to which I quickly lost.

Verdict? I loved this demanding, moving and hypnotic series. We don’t watch Shogun scrolling through their Instagram feed or playing Six Letter Word in The Press+.

The dialogue is mostly in Japanese (subtitled, of course), the characters all look the same in their gorgeous period costumes, and the slow pace is unsettling during the first two episodes, out of a total of ten.

But if you like complicated sword stories, Game of Thrones, Shogun will nail you to the sofa in an intense trance, punctuated by precise rituals, political intrigues, polite bows and bloodbaths, there is no escape.

The story, the same as the miniseries Shogun NBC’s 1980 drama begins in 1600, when the ship of English captain John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) runs aground on the east coast of Japan, near Osaka.

At the beginning of the 17th century^e century, the Catholic Portuguese served as a commercial intermediary between China and Japan, a hyper-lucrative market that the Church of England was eyeing. Hence the unexpected presence of the sailor John Blackthorne in the Land of the Rising Sun, then governed by five powerful lords.

A rough, foul-mouthed but cunning man, John Blackthorne has no understanding of the complex codes of feudal Japan. Which obviously gets him into trouble.

Conversely, this is the first time that the Japanese hear the English language and learn of the existence of Protestantism.

Also, John Blackthorne has several firearms, powerful cannons and crucial information that the Portuguese, on an evangelistic mission for 60 years, have never revealed to the Japanese.

Ambitious lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) quickly grasps the importance of this English traveler and keeps him at his side in order to learn new combat tactics as a civil war is about to break out.

The third pivotal character of Shogun is called Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai). She is a bilingual, sweet, brilliant and loyal woman, who translates all the exchanges between John Blackthorne and Yoshii Toranaga. It is also Toda Mariko who will teach John Blackthorne how to navigate in the hyper-codified Japanese society, light years away from the dirty and noisy city of London where he grew up.

Without giving anything away, a strong emotional bond develops between John Blackthorne and Toda Mariko, who is nevertheless married to a bloodthirsty samurai.

Shogun integrates epic battles, political dealings and romantic elements into episodes of visual splendor. It’s beautiful.

By the way, to save you a distracting dip on Google, here is the answer to a question that will certainly bother you when watching Shogun : Samurai shave their foreheads and the top of their heads to make it easier to wear their heavy metal helmets. This haircut, never requested by barbers here, is called “chonmage”. You’re welcome.

For another type of change of scenery at a low price, you really have to plug into True Detective: Night Countryavailable on the Crave platform. This fourth season, with Jodie Foster as the heroine, reconciled me with the police franchise that I had abandoned since 2015.

Each of the chapters of True Detective lives independently. So, no need to have seen the previous ones to cling to the new ones. In Night Countrythe action takes place in an isolated village in northern Alaska, near the Arctic Circle.

Eight scientists installed in a research base disappear in the middle of the night. We find their bodies entwined and petrified in the ice, in a scene evoking a horror film. Hello the atmosphere of The Thing by John Carpenter, from the series The X-Files and of The fault from Club illico.

This is where Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster), the local police chief, begins the investigation, as the polar night settles in this lunar landscape. Read: it is dark – and very cold – for a whole month.

Liz Danvers is an abrasive and pragmatic woman, who drags several traumas. Her colleague cop Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), a member of the indigenous Inupiat people, also carries wounds that she hopes to heal by shedding light on this mysterious and opaque case.

There are just enough touches of the supernatural in True Detective: Night Country to keep the police aspect credible. It also deals with a polluting mine, murdered indigenous women and the spirits of the dead haunting the living.

And thank you, good night, it can be devoured in a weekend: six one-hour episodes that tie up the threads in a surprising way. Hurry up and watch True Detective: Night Country before the real TV season starts in exactly two weeks, tick, tock, tick, tock.