3 Body Problem and Shōgun are post-Game of Thrones semi-Dad Shows
The two biggest shows of the moment aren't Dad Shows, but they kind of are, too
Game of Thrones wasn’t a Dad Show. It had Dad Show aspects, but it was an Everybody Show, and the last of its kind. There hasn’t been a monocultural TV show since it ended. It was the last show that dads, moms, young, old, fans, and haters all watched together. And as someone who worked for a TV website in 2019, I can tell you from experience that nothing has replaced it. The click economy never recovered from Game of Thrones ending. TV – even very popular TV – exclusively exists in siloed niches now.
But a couple of outlets are still bravely trying to make shows in the Game of Thrones vein. Currently, TV has two big-budget epics with prestige sheen meant to appeal to a wide-ranging adult demographic. One is Netflix’s sci-fi thriller 3 Body Problem, a show about how video games will lead to humanity’s downfall, and the other is FX’s historical drama Shōgun, a show about how much it would have sucked to live in feudal Japan.
Like Game of Thrones, neither of these shows are Dad Shows. Not exactly. They’re ensemble shows told from multiple characters’ perspectives, and only some of those characters are highly competent middle-aged men with complicated relationships with their families. So they can’t fully qualify as Dad Shows. But they make up their own mini-trend as TV’s only post-Game of Thrones epics with Dad Show characteristics.
Dad Body Problem
While plenty of dads like sci-fi, there aren’t many sci-fi Dad Shows. (The same is true of the fantasy genre.) Dad Shows tend to be earthy and human-scale, with ground-level problems. Dad Show characters are too busy solving or committing crimes to worry about the fate of the world. But sci-fi shows can have Dad Show elements. 3 Body Problem is one such show.
The Avatar of Dadness in 3BP is Clarence, the world-weary detective played by Benedict Wong. Clarence is very good at his job and has a strained relationship with his son, a lazy schemer who mostly just plays video games all day. (The producers of 3 Body Problem make it a point to underline that video games are bad, and I appreciate them for that.) Clarence dresses like a slob, doesn’t take good care of himself, and is willing to devote his life to protecting someone who doesn’t appreciate him. If the show were just about him, it would be a Dad Show. It would also have one-millionth of the budget and only be available to stream on BritBox.
The violence in 3 Body Problem also gives it a Dad Show qualification. I have not yet touched upon the role of violence in Dad Shows, but it is an important aspect. People getting killed in gruesome ways is not exclusive to Dad Shows, nor is it a requirement. But it is part of the attraction/repulsion thrill of many of them. Maybe I’ll write an essay about what violence means in Dad Shows for a future issue. But right now, my point is that 3 Body Problem has what I like to call Some ‘Damn, That’s Crazy’ Shit. If it’s some brutal, imaginative violence that makes you say “damn, that’s crazy” out loud, that’s Some ‘Damn That’s Crazy’ Shit.
The physics in 3 Body Problem are not a Dad Show’s concern. That’s for nerds. But people getting sliced in half by invisible nanofibers is viscerally Some ‘Damn That’s Crazy’ Shit. You don’t totally understand it, but you feel it.
3 Body Problem is created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the Game of Thrones guys, along with Alexander Woo, who I once had a great time talking to about his previous show The Terror: Infamy. I like him. And I have no beef with the Game of Thrones guys, which some internet users still do for their manhandling of the final seasons. (Also, everybody resents a guy with David Benioff’s looks and biography. Go be an actor or an investment banker if you’re gonna be so handsome and rich, Dave! Being a writer is for people who can’t do anything else.)
3 Body Problem has a lot of the same strengths and flaws that Dave & Dan brought to Game of Thrones. They are incredible at adapting dense, cerebral novels into digestible television. No one is better at seeing the big picture. But some of 3BP’s plot and dialogue details make me want to face the wall and run straight into it. It tracks that the guys who thought “There's nothing in the world more powerful than a good story" was a good ending for Game of Thrones also think a supermodel-hot, chain-smoking physicist who would rather let humanity die than work with people she doesn’t personally like is a good character. They’re simple men who love good stories and beautiful women. They may not make Dad Shows, but they’re Dads.
Dad Shōgun
Shōgun is a historical drama, which unlike 3 Body Problem means it’s firmly in a Dad Genre. But it also is not a true Dad Show, for the same primary reason as 3BP: there’s too much other stuff going on. Shōgun has three main characters. One of them qualifies as a Dad Show protagonist. And it’s not John Blackthorne, though Cosmo Jarvis could have a career as a Dad Actor if he leads a show where he plays a spy or a special ops soldier, which he probably will someday.
No, the only Dad of Shōgun is Toronaga.
No one is as competent as Toronaga-sama. He is fated to rule as shōgun, but he’s too humble to want the role. The other regents don’t want him around because he’s so much cooler than them. He is a wise, charismatic, and demanding but fair leader, as all Dads are in their own minds.
Shōgun is the Game of Thrones successor that best understands what truly made Thrones great. It wasn’t the dragons, it was the politics. Shōgun is a show where people sitting in a room and quietly talking to each other is as thrilling as a violent action sequence, which the show also does well. When they boil a dude alive or blow a bunch of guys apart with cannons? That’s Some ‘Damn, That’s Crazy’ Shit.
Thrones and Shōgun are also both shows that depict worlds with very different morals than our own without judgment. In Shōgun, that world involves strict honor codes that the modern American mind can’t comprehend. We all would have seppuku’d our family lines out of existence over minor infractions like being too rude while defending our boss. In Game of Thrones, that world involves incest.
I will leave you today with a Dad Show recommendation. Shōgun co-creator Justin Marks previously created Counterpart, one of the best hidden gem shows of the past decade. It’s a rare sci-fi Dad Show that achieves this status by hybridizing science fiction with the true Dad Genres of spy thriller and speculative historical drama. J.K. Simmons plays dual roles as a hardened spy on one side of an interdimensional Berlin Wall and a sad, regular guy on the other. Lots of actors have played dual roles, but few have ever done it as well as J.K. Simmons does here.
Counterpart ran for two seasons on Starz from 2017 to 2019, and it’s currently only available to rent or buy on Prime Video, which is annoying. But if you want to watch a great show you almost certainly haven’t seen, it’s worth paying extra.
Before we go…
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