Sons Of Liberty History Channel

[Zorral]

Sons of Liberty is a three-part History Channel scripted series that dramatizes the lead up to the Declaration of Independence; it premieres Sunday night, January 25th. The look of it is very slick period staging. It's Boston, so there's lots of mob violence, which is more than accurate for Boston and the push to get the Colonies to secede from English crown rule. This also ensures that Sons of Liberty will be more generally entertaining than last year's AMC's earnest and very badly titled Turn was.

The central figure is Sam Adams -- John Adams's cousin. With the focus on Boston and Adams's crew, we probably won't see the accompanying strategizing with figures from Virginia and South Carolina -- which included their own tea parties, as part of galvanizing the citizens generally for secession. Or, maybe we will, since George Washington is among the cast of characters, though Jefferson seems not to be.

Sons of Liberty doesn't seem to be entirely factually accurate, but at least the historical consultants for the series tell us the facts in their own video bits, for instance, emphasizing why the Crown put the tax and other regulation on tea, such as only tea from the East India Company and their agents could be sold in the Colonies, in order to bail out the bankrupt Company. I don't know, however, if the series will also tell us how much every agent in the Colonies depended on selling the lower priced smuggled tea to the financially stressed, always cash-strapped Colonies' women who found the non-taxed smuggled tea to be more than compatible with their household accounts.

It does look from the sneak videos that we will see how little the English Crown and parliamentarians knew about their North Atlantic colonies. For instance, when reading the documents from the period -- as independent historian Nick Bunker did in his most readable book, An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America (2014), many of them seemed not to understand that the mid-Atlantic colonies such as New York, and the New England colonies, were populated mainly by white people with small farms -- completely unlike conditions in their Caribbean sugar colonies.

Sons of Liberty has been criticized in some quarters for casting so many English actors in the leading roles. However, then, one wonders: how much of the history of the Independence movement in the Colonies is understood in those quarters, since, you know, all those personages were citizens of England. It wasn't until around the Tea Party era that people in the Colonies began to refer to themselves as American rather than English.

Appropriately, Sons of Liberty is underwritten at least in part by Sam Adams beer, and it seems, also appropriately, by Rums of Puerto Rico. It wasn't only tea the North American colonists smuggled at astounding rates, but rum. There were also the illegal distilleries, particularly in Rhode Island, the English officials were supposed to shut down. And where did Sam Adams et al. plot? In taverns, of course. :)

[Alia of the knife]

Just caught up to the show, and while taking it with a grain of salt, I love it.

(Wow, Ben Barnes has really roughed himself up for the part. Not quite as pretty as Prince Caspian, lol).

I think a lot of people forget that in some quarters, this is considered by the British, a civil war.

The only thing is that the actual "Boston" accent would not come about for quite some time, and forget the impact the Irish would have on the langauge.

[Rhom]

I was hoping the History Channel was running a show on Metal Gear Solid 2. :(

[Nuncle Kraken]

I'm diggin it. Clearly playing a little fast and loose with precise facts, but it's entertaining. Doesn't hurt that the Revolution is my favorite period of American history. Good actors, great stories and slick production. Only wish it covered more of the period.

[red snow]

Got this on my "to watch list" - I'm currently listening to Mike Duncan's podcast on the era and I liked what "turn" was about if not the execution. And I've had more of an interest in it since "John Adams" years ago.

I think it is a good call on how it could be considered almost a "civil war" particularly in terms of the english colonists. Slightly more convoluted with all the other europeans in the colonies at the time. It's a fascintating period of history though - the likes of which we'll probably only see again when/if we bother to colonise other planets.

[Quoth]

I'm diggin it. Clearly playing a little fast and loose with precise facts, but it's entertaining. Doesn't hurt that the Revolution is my favorite period of American history. Good actors, great stories and slick production. Only wish it covered more of the period.

Me, too. A good watch. Played up the the "rabble rousing/rebellious minority" angle very well, which one doesn't often see in shows about this period.

[Zorral]

The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic

by Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh is a remarkably good study of this part of the Independence movement, as are Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the Founders by David Waldstreicher and The Life and Times of the Midnight Rider: Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fischer.

But there don't seem to be many through Boston's cellars, streets and over the rooftop chases in these books. :) But plenty of mobbing and plotting.

[Alia of the knife]

Got this on my "to watch list" - I'm currently listening to Mike Duncan's podcast on the era and I liked what "turn" was about if not the execution. And I've had more of an interest in it since "John Adams" years ago.

I think it is a good call on how it could be considered almost a "civil war" particularly in terms of the english colonists. Slightly more convoluted with all the other europeans in the colonies at the time. It's a fascintating period of history though - the likes of which we'll probably only see again when/if we bother to colonise other planets.

The British would find them more familiar than modern Americans, which is ironic.

[Alia of the knife]

Paul Revere does sound more like he should be in "The Town," as that accent wouldn't evolve for a couple of centuries.

[Macklunkey]

British not English. Thank you.

[Crazydog7]

I know it comes with the territory but I wish people would understand that the only reason people remember Paul Revere at all is that Longfellow gave him the best press ever.

As per the story itself its what I’ve always said about History Cannel productions great for what it was and a better effort then their usual fare of watching other people work in a pawn shop for a living

[Alia of the knife]

British not English. Thank you.

Okay, fixed that. British it is.

[Zorral]

Actually Revere was a big deal in Adams's cells of conspiracy, as David Hackett Fischer's book, complete with tables of cross-referenced identities of the cells, shows.

He played a huge role. Not his fault that Longfellow did the whole ride rong -- the History Channel's SoL did a better job of showing it.

What I can't get used to is having Sam Adams

1) portrayed as "one of the people" -- though not that successful, he was a Harvard grad, his father gave him 1,000 pounds to start his own business, and was as at home in wig, satin breeches and silk stockings as Hancock or Huchineson;

2) so well known to the Brits because the whole point of planning such a successful conspiracy and uprising and lead-up to the War for Independence is that he was not known -- he ran the spy cells, and Revere was his primary liaison.

Huchinson's character isn't right either -- he wanted out of the Colonies as governor so badly! and was denied his resignation for quite some time. Nor was his mansion sacked because of Adams, and it happened much later than it does in the series.

That whole depiction of Benjamin Franklin -- UGH. And Rong. Except that he was quite the womanizer, but a drunk? Nope

General Gage -- He was living in New York as Commander of the military forces in the Colonies, and had been in the Colonies since 1755; he did take a year off in 1773 to go back to England and do some professional pressing of the flesh, schmoozing for emolluments, grade rise and look into the family. It's deeply disappointing that once again writers think the only way to show the Britis as inevitably sadistic bullies who beat their wives. This isn't Gage . . . . And then the wife, in order to have a female characters who does something, has to an affair with a colonist. I call that lazy writing as well as all bs. Moreover, Washington didn't hate Gage at all.

So much is lies, which is sad.

Because the real movement was astounding and how it happened. There is as much action as anybody could want, so WHY do it like this? The books I mentioned before:

The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic

by Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh, Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the Founders by David Waldstreicher and The Life and Times of the Midnight Rider: Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fischer,

plus Nick Bunker's Empire at the Edge of the World are the best sources that are not doorstoppers and are good reading, written in language for a reader as opposed to a scholar = researcher

are jam-packed with exciting sequences. Bunker's description of the taking of the British Gaspee by a Rhode Island sea captain just for starters. :)

However, George Washington ... I've gotten interested in the last few years as to how historic fiction in print or on the screen depict him. Almost always he enters, like a demi god, surrounded in light. We never quite get a good look at him. I'm attempting to parse out what this says about the place GW holds in our national consciousness. We're not afraid of the Adamses and Ben Franklin, or even Jefferson, but we hardly dare to touch GW . . . .

[Talleyrand]

I was pretty sure Gage pissed off a few of his subordinates by refusing to all the shit this show has him do like kicking in doors and confiscating stuff

[Zorral]

There are highly knowledgable and respectable historians who do think that Margaret, Gage's wife, was the spy, and that Dr. Warren and she were lovers, Hackett-Fischer among them.

But -- by all the accounts of the time, she and Gage had a happy marriage. Moreover she had 10 children or at least 10 pregnancies, so when would she have had time to spy? Or even to have a lover for that matter? :)

New Jersey, where Margaret's from, wasn't the most enthusiastic state for Independence, especially as it looked to NJ at the time as if it was all about Massachusetts and NJ and MA were fairly rivals. But then, all the colonies were all for ME FIRST. It wasn't easy to pull them all together. It still isn't. :)

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

I really enjoyed it. As far as being historically correct....its entertainment. You rarely see a TV show that doesn't embellish some part to make it good TV. Overall, The History Channel has been putting out some good series latelely, I've enjoyed all of them.

[Zorral]

In terms of entertainment, the second and third episodes were better than the first one, or so it seemed to me.

The problem though, when it comes to history = entertainment, entertainment versions always trump the real thing in people's memories, which creates continuing problems nationally. You also have kids in the schoolroom telling teachers they're wrong because Braveheart or whatever showed something else. It's getting more difficult these days to get students to understand the difference between fiction and fact.

[Lukey]

Is this show along the same line as Mel Gibson's The Patriot?

[dbunting]

I enjoyed the series, wish it had been longer. Wasn't expecting it to be 100% factual so it doesn't bother me that it was dramatized for tv.

[Zorral]

It's not as incredibly out of reality as Gibson's southern planter with a plantation that has no slaves working on it -- or medieval princesses galloping across countries and borders in order to hook up with a commoner for hot sex without a single attendant or even a shawl.

At least in Sons of Liberty there is plausibility involved -- if one discounts the chase through cellars, streets and over rooftops that opens the series.