Ryomaden

Well, it looks like NHK's taiga drama for 2010 is Ryomaden. Oddly enough, it's about a man who died at the age of 32 but who is being portrayed by a popular Japanese rock star-turned-actor born in 1969. ^^; He played the main role in a very good criminal mystery drama, Galileo, which was somewhat akin to CBS's Numbers except starring an attractive male physics nerd instead of an elf-turned-geeky male math nerd and an attractive female police officer for a partner instead of an attractive male police officer + older brother for a partner. I thought he acted just fine as the socially-awkward Galileo, but it'll have to be seen how he fares in a serious political drama like this.

Last year's NHK taiga drama was t-e-r-r-i-b-l-e (I dropped it after three episodes, and the subtitler at the time dropped it himself by episode 6 @_@), so Ryomaden will likely be an indicator as to whether the NHK, one of Japan's major television studios, has backpedaled towards the formulas from yesteryear which brought it much success or whether it intends to obstinately press forward with its new impishly-silly portrayal of historical figures.