The Best Game Of Thrones Successor Isn't On HBO – And Has No Dragons

Despite the widely despised series finale of "Game of Thrones" — which, for the record, we at /Film didn't hate nearly as much as the rest of the world seemed to at the time — the show was an immense cultural juggernaut for HBO, and in the risk-averse television landscape, it's only natural that other channels and streamers saw that show's success and wanted to replicate it for themselves. Prime Video spend ungodly amounts of money on the rights to a TV show set in "The Lord of the Rings" universe, Netflix dumped a bunch of money into the forgotten "Marco Polo," and even History got into the mix with "Vikings."

FX, meanwhile, decided to greenlight "Shogun," a tremendously expensive-looking adaptation of James Clavell's 1975 novel (which was previously adapted into an ultra-popular miniseries in the '80s). After enduring production delays due to the pandemic and finally premiering this February, the 10-episode first (and only?) season came to a close last week — and even as a fan of "The Rings of Power," I can confidently say that none of these other "Game of Thrones" imitators have come as close to capturing the thrilling early "Thrones" days as "Shōgun."

The FX drama series is reminiscent of the early seasons of the HBO smash hit in several ways. It drops its audience into a fully-realized world and expects us to keep up. It feels epic without overextending its scope. It features artisans at the absolute peak of their craft coming together to create best-in-class production design, set design, costumes, cinematography, and direction. Star-making turns proliferate throughout the cast, from stars like Hiroyuki Sanada ("Avengers: Endgame," "John Wick: Chapter 4") to familiar faces like Tadanobu Asano (who plays Yabushige) to Cosmo Jarvis (John Blackthorne) to Anna Sawai, who is the MVP of the entire series as Lady Mariko. Then there are more surface-level comparisons, like the two shows sharing a predilection for political intrigue and backroom dealing, gruesome deaths, steam bath confessionals, a forbidden romance, and a sense that a conversation can be as dangerous as a gargantuan battle sequence.