So many of the comments posted here regarding this series are baffling. BORING? Because they aren't showing us the revolutionary war? Perhaps the title John Adams would be the first clue. This is the story of the man in the times not the times through the man.
Giamatti and Linney are giving the performances of their careers - the Emmys and Golden Globes are already in the bag. I find their relationship to each other and their playing of the reality of late 18th century life astonishing.
I think that Giamatti, Linney, Wilkinson, Dillane, Morse et al are turning these people (whom we tend to think of as stiff, formal oil-paintings or faces on currency) into fleshed-out, three dimensional human beings. In the fourth episode alone we had Giamatti's heart-breaking reaction to the news of Britain's defeat; the reunion scene between John and Abigail when they have no idea how to approach each other after so many years apart; Giamatti's first scene in the English court which captured both the magnitude and the discomfort of a moment that had never occurred before in history; and the moment between Adams and Washington after the oath of office where we realize that only THEN, in that moment, had the goal really been achieved.
This series is full of small, intensely honest moments moments of real people caught up in a storm of their own creation but one that they have no way of being prepared for - and these moments, for me, are adding up to a very satisfying whole. In fact, it's made me rethink the whole Revolutionary era but then, so did David McCullough's book.
Giamatti and Linney are giving the performances of their careers - the Emmys and Golden Globes are already in the bag. I find their relationship to each other and their playing of the reality of late 18th century life astonishing.
I think that Giamatti, Linney, Wilkinson, Dillane, Morse et al are turning these people (whom we tend to think of as stiff, formal oil-paintings or faces on currency) into fleshed-out, three dimensional human beings. In the fourth episode alone we had Giamatti's heart-breaking reaction to the news of Britain's defeat; the reunion scene between John and Abigail when they have no idea how to approach each other after so many years apart; Giamatti's first scene in the English court which captured both the magnitude and the discomfort of a moment that had never occurred before in history; and the moment between Adams and Washington after the oath of office where we realize that only THEN, in that moment, had the goal really been achieved.
This series is full of small, intensely honest moments moments of real people caught up in a storm of their own creation but one that they have no way of being prepared for - and these moments, for me, are adding up to a very satisfying whole. In fact, it's made me rethink the whole Revolutionary era but then, so did David McCullough's book.