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Ale and Muskets Frame Revolt
There is no shame in not knowing why Boston boasts a beer called “Samuel Adams,” or why it’s the New England Patriots, not the New England Panthers or the New England Pistols.
But there probably should be some. And that makes “Sons of Liberty,” a History mini-series that begins Sunday, useful as well as entertaining.
It opens with the prequel, so to speak, to the American Revolution, a look at the Boston upstarts who led the rebellion against the British crown, and it is framed, not by quill pens and Sunday sermons, but by tavern brawls, rooftop chase scenes, ale, muskets, wenches, smugglers and some very savage mob violence. The opening scene is set on the less quaint streets of Boston in 1765, and it looks a lot like Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York.”
The History channel admits there is quite a bit of license to this three-part series, calling it “historical fiction,” not fact, but it is close enough. “Sons of Liberty” is fun and engaging, a better option than a much more ambitious, highfalutin series on AMC last year, “Turn,” which followed a ring of spies working for Gen. George Washington and which was far too elliptical and unwelcoming. “Sons of Liberty” is not as elegantly filmed and high-minded as the HBO series “John Adams,” but here, that’s appropriate.
The focus is on Sam Adams (Ben Barnes), John Adams’s feistier, rowdier and, at least in this account, much-better-looking cousin. “Sons of Liberty” follows Sam, a tax collector for the crown who won’t take money from strapped friends, as he helps start a rebellion with a band of loutish thugs, as well as a silversmith named Paul Revere (Michael Raymond-James); a doctor, Joseph Warren (Ryan Eggold); and a wealthy merchant, John Hancock (Rafe Spall).
The colonists won the war, but Britain seems to have triumphed in the battle of show business. A startling number of the actors chosen to play America’s founding fathers are British, including Mr. Barnes and Mr. Spall; Washington is played by an Irish actor, Jason O’Mara. Even Margaret Gage, the American-born wife of a British general, Thomas Gage, is played by an English actress, Emily Berrington.
Mr. Barnes is a handsome, brooding and athletic Adams, but Mr. Spall steals the show with his mischievous portrayal of Hancock as a vain but sneaky fop and obsequious loyalist who gets his rebel groove on as he loses more and more property to the British overlords. Mr. Eggold gets the girl, though: In this telling of the story, Margaret Gage has a torrid affair with the handsome, helpful Dr. Warren while secretly helping the rebels.
The English are snobbish and overbearing but not very well-informed. One of the first scenes shows Boston malcontents storming the mansion of the British governor of Massachusetts Bay, Thomas Hutchinson. When an aide warns Hutchinson that trouble is brewing at his gates, he keeps reading. “This is Boston,” he says shortly. “There is always a mob.”
The American Revolution was a turning point, and in some ways, so is “Sons of Liberty,” at least for the History channel. That cable network has so stretched its storytelling style over the last decade or so that its transition from documentaries to mini-series looks like those charts that show evolution from knuckle dragger to modern man.
For years, it was known as “the Hitler Channel,” because it showed so many documentaries crammed with real black-and-white footage of World War II. Other subjects got the hokey re-enactment treatment. In 2003, for example, the channel offered “Russia, Land of the Tsars,” a sweeping look at the bloodiest moments of pre-Soviet history that relied on interviews with historians intercut with frugal but lurid tableaus, like bright red blood seeping into snow.
“Hatfields & McCoys” from 2012, which starred Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton, was the channel’s first mini-series, and a huge hit.
“Vikings,” which begins a third season in February, is a richly imagined look at tribes of pillagers and raiders in the Dark Ages, appropriately filmed in washed-out hues of brown and gray that convey Nordic gloom.
Like those works, there is no narrator in “Sons of Liberty,” there are no historians like Doris Kearns Goodwin explaining why the Stamp Act was imposed, and there are no re-enactments — the battle scenes, like the brawls and chase scenes, are vivid, explicit and violent.
“Sons of Liberty” isn’t history exactly, but it’s a well-made dramatization that brings history to life.
Sons of Liberty
History, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time.
Produced by A+E Studios in association with Stephen David Entertainment for History. Directed by Kari Skogland; written by Stephen David and David C. White; Mr. David and Matthew Gross, executive producers; Russ McCarroll and Elaine Frontain Bryant, executive producers for History; title theme by Hans Zimmer.
WITH: Ben Barnes (Sam Adams), Ryan Eggold (Dr. Joseph Warren), Michael Raymond-James (Paul Revere), Rafe Spall (John Hancock), Henry Thomas (John Adams), Marton Csokas (Gen. Thomas Gage), Emily Berrington (Margaret Gage), Jason O’Mara (Gen. George Washington), Dean Norris (Benjamin Franklin) and Sean Gilder (Thomas Hutchinson).
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