How HBO Max's Tokyo Vice differs from Miami Vice
The latest TV series to hit HBO Max has a familiar-sounding title. So how does Tokyo Vice compare to Miami Vice? Allow us to explain — with help from show creator J.T. Rogers and producer Alan Poul.
Let's get the most obvious similarities out of the way first. Tokyo Vice and Miami Vice are both crime shows set in their respective titular locales, and both involve the creative input of famed filmmaker Michael Mann. The executive producer of the original Miami Vice TV series and the director of the 2006 film adaptation also directed the first episode of Tokyo Vice — and served as an executive producer on the new show.
However, the title actually predates Mann's involvement. It comes from journalist Jake Adelstein's 2009 memoir Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan, upon which the show is based. Ansel Elgort stars as a fictionalized version of Adelstein.
"It's an interesting genesis," Poul tells EW. "When Jake wrote his book, he was a huge fan of both the series and the Miami Vice movie, so he was making this winking reference with the title, which we didn't really need to think about until Michael came on as director of the pilot. There was this moment of collective panic where we were like, 'oh my god we have to change the name of the show! Everybody will think it's Michael now doing the Tokyo version of Miami Vice.' But in the end it's what the book is called, and the show stands on its own."
HBO/Max; Gary Null/NBCU Photo Bank Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe in 'Tokyo Vice' vs. Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas in 'Miami Vice.'
Adelstein's perspective gives an important distinction between Tokyo Vice and Miami Vice: The protagonist of this story is a journalist, not a cop. That means the momentum of the new show is about chasing down interesting stories rather than catching criminals. But the path to writing good newspaper stories brings Adelstein face-to-face with both police (like Ken Watanabe's Detective Hiroto Katagiri) and yakuza criminals. The lines between cops and robbers start to blur as Adelstein moves deeper into the Tokyo underworld and learns of the fragile agreements that maintain peace between different factions. The cops of Miami Vice would understand those blurred lines — after all, they often go undercover in order to bust drug dealers, and sometimes struggle to separate their true selves from their adopted criminal personas.
An interesting divide between Tokyo Vice and both incarnations of Miami Vice is the relationship between their settings and the times in which they were made. Both the Miami Vice TV show and film were very contemporary: The TV show's pastel colors and pop soundtrack embody the '80s, while the film's use of pioneering digital photography, "realistic" take on the material, and use of Audioslave songs reflect the zeitgeist of the mid-2000s. Both versions of Miami Vice therefore provide insights into the past, but they were made to respond to their times.
Tokyo Vice, by contrast, is set decades ago in the late '90s — because, again, it's based on Adelstein's real life, and that's when he arrived in Japan. Period references abound in the show: Adelstein bonds with a yakuza member by debating the respective merits of the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, and later tricks a source in a way that would be impossible in a world of smartphones.
"I'm learning that the first response of every studio is 'let's make it now.' But I was pretty adamant, and to their credit they were fine with it, that the story has to stay in the period of time when the book was written," Rogers says. "There's a reason the real Jake is still alive, and that's because there were no smartphones when all this went down. Literally and metaphorically, this was a Tokyo where lifelong residents would still get lost in the backstreets because it's so confusing."
"We're at that intermediate stage of the technological revolution, which is a really interesting time," Poul adds. "The '80s was the big boom time in Japan, when Japan was the number two economy in the world and looked like it might become number one. But then in the early/mid-'90s, their little bubble of complete prosperity burst, and Japan was having economic difficulties during this period."
Poul continues, "as a result, land prices that had been wildly overinflated started to go into flux, and that created a unique opening for the yakuza to come in and ratchet up their level of power. Now the power of the yakuza is significantly reduced, both because of natural changes and new laws that have been enacted, but we're coming in at a time that was peak yakuza."
To see the similarities and differences for yourself, check out the first three episodes of Tokyo Vice streaming now on HBO Max.
Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.
Related content:
