Lately, I've been watching the dvd release of the Zatoichi TV series. If you've seen any of the Zatoichi movies, including the recent Beat Takeshi version, you're familiar with the premise– a blind yakuza travels all over Japan gambling and getting into trouble, but generally using his incredible Iaido skills and sensitive hearing to help out the common people–and the TV show is more of the same. In fact, some of the plots are recycled, but there were 26 movies, so that's inevitable.
The production values seem to be every bit as good as in the movies, and Shntaro Katsu is really endearing as the blind anti-hero. The only real difference between the TV show and the movies is that each episode is only 45 minutes long, but as one review on Amazon correctly observes, that might actually be a strength. The plots are all simplified and you reach the decisive battle sooner.
They made 100 episodes, of which the first 17 have been released in four volumes. Volume 5 comes out in a couple of weeks. I have already pre-ordered.