Michael Mann’s “Tokyo Vice” series launched its eight-episode season over a three-week period in April on Max (formerly HBO Max).
Shot on location in Japan, the series stars Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe in a story based on journalist Jake Adelstein’s first-hand account of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat in the 1990s as the worlds of crime reporters, beat cops and yakuza crime lords overlap.
The title scored very good reviews and by June of that year was already renewed for a second season that aimed to begin production quickly.
Filming began on the second run in November last year and managed to finish its shoot three weeks ago, getting everything done just days before the actor’s strike began.
Speaking with THR, producer Alan Poul revealed that the biggest difference between filming the first and second seasons was how the locals treated the production:
“On season one, nobody knew us. People tend to be hesitant about new things in Japan, but not only that, we were a show that was loosely based on a nonfiction memoir that was so controversial in Japan that it’s never been properly published — also, incidentally, it deals with the world of the Yakuza.
So people had good reasons to be hesitant about having any contact with us. During season one, we got a lot of flat denials on things just based on the perceived association with organized crime.
Now, on season two, everybody knows what the show is, and everybody knows that the show takes a very authentic Japanese point of view in describing Tokyo in the 90s. So we’re finding many more doors opening and people actually welcoming us, or even soliciting us, on the basis of how much they enjoyed the first season. So that’s a dramatic change.”
The series has been praised for its cultural authenticity, and marks the very first big-budget U.S. series to have been shot entirely in Japan. The full interview is up at THR.
