Wife and I watched both of these in the last couple of weeks, and I found them both compelling in different ways. Each has been adapted before, but these versions took different tacts.

Ripley is super-stylized, all black and white and with some amazing cinematography. It's more faithful in many ways to the novel than the '90s movie, other than the huge change of aging up the characters (which is not a small thing). It's fascinating to watch in light of the all the post-Ripley characters since the original novel and the movie (see Saltburn or Hannibal) how this sociopath is not always hyper-competent, and often makes mistakes. It's an air of realism in an unrealistic world. The acting's phenomenal (especially surprising to me was Dakota Fanning, who seems to have been overshadowed by her sister in recent years), and there's some nice droll comedy.

Shogun is just fantastic, an epic that's also much more faithful to Clavell's novel than the original series (which hit the plot points, but reduced things to one character's POV). It's got Game of Thrones levels of conflict and intrigue, but without the dragons, and if you know any of the (fictionalized but not fictional) history involved, there are stakes you just don't feel in a fantasy world. Obviously, a show that's 60-65% subtitled means it's not one to half-pay attention to while playing Candy Crush, but I felt like it rewarded the effort. As with Ripley, the cast helps carry things incredibly well here

I'm a fan of both of the original novels, as well as the previous adaptations, but that also means I went in having a pretty good idea of what to expect overall. My wife hadn't read or watched the previous ones, and also enjoyed them, so I'd say they work on both levels.

(Ripley is on Netflix, Shogun on Hulu in the US, though that may be different locally or you may not care if you watch your TV via torrents or other options.)