Review: Shogun, "Tomorrow Is Tomorrow"
I'm still not quite sure what to make of Cosmo Jarvis as John Blackthorne. It's a committed performance, to be sure, and there's a rawness to it that I appreciate; again, while I haven't seen the 1980 miniseries (thank you for the correction, commenters; I swear to god I looked up the date before I posted about it, but somehow still managed to get it wrong), I'm willing to bet this a far cry from the kind of work Richard Chamberlain was doing in the same role. It fits with the show's attempts to contrast the elegance of the upper classes with the grime and the muck of being not quite among the elite—it also works to de-romanticize our understanding of the past, by ensuring we never forget how bad all of these people probably would've smelled. (Well, Blackthorne, at least; dude reacted like the idea of more than one bath a week was pure insanity.)
But while I appreciate that rawness, and the intensity that comes with it, that's not enough for this kind of role. …
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