TMOT: You will totally thank me for making you watch “Giri/Haji”

I don’t usually reveal my guilty-pleasure bingewatches here, but pandemic is pandemic, and Giri/Haji (Duty/Shame) is the best Japanese drama I’ve ever seen (even though it was produced by the BBC for Netflix GO FIGURE).

This is more like it:

Top five reasons to watch:

1: All the Japan & such

2: But actually, RODNEY

3: Rodney.

4: To be honest, there could never be too much Rodney.

5: Okay, also, Yuto (the curiously appealing fugitive brother), Kenzo (the stranger-in-a-strange-land Japanese cop), and Sarah (the perpetually-worried but occasionally deadpan-funny London detective).

Seriously, even though Giri/Haji is slightly hobbled by being infested with yakuza (the world’s most predictable bad guys, ugh, YAWN) they are more than made up for by hilariously unpredictable & nasty British lowlifes/clock-punching hitpersons and main characters who keep doing all the wrong things for the right reasons, so

Me: <facepalm>

Also me: OMG, please, make it out of this alive

All that, plus the plot twists, script wittiness and gorgeous production values we’ve come to expect from the BBC, and best of all (the miracles keep on coming) the Japanese characters are actually played by Japanese actors, and they use real Japanese that doesn’t sound like it was lame Google-translated from English.*

The British bits and the Japanese bits are BOTH pitch-perfect. Even the main detective’s family back in Tokyo is hair-pullingly Japanese. And while the idea of a cop with a gangster brother isn’t new, this take on it is surprisingly nuanced. It’s rare to find a production that leaves me knowing that the bad guys are a little good, and the good guys are a little bad, and loving them all the more for it.

I’m telling you: Watch it.

*The Japanese dialogue is all excellently subtitled in English, of course

Here’s the official trailer, which gives you a general idea of what’s it’s about, but kinda misses the best parts, which are not the shooty & stabby bits, but the characters’ relationships, which entertain thoroughly as they deepen:

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Jonelle Patrick writes novels set in Japan, produces the monthly newsletter Japanagram, and blogs at Only In Japan and The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had