Writers Kirk Ellis and Michelle Ashford do justice to McCullough's narration, and director Tom Hooper has a straightforward style that gives flesh-and-blood dimension to names from history books. Best of all are two extraordinary performances at the center: Paul Giamatti as Adams and Laura Linney as his wife, Abigail.
Credit for building drama goes to screenwriter Kirk Ellis ("Into the West") and actor Paul Giamatti ("Sideways"). His intellectual, vain Adams is a reluctant rebel, tentative in his support of an American revolution, wary of insurgency and mob rule and defender of the tenets of American democracy.
It manages to be a rousing piece of filmmaking, a fascinating character study and a largely accurate presentation of the time when America was born.
Who says TV doesn't make history thought-provokingly exciting?
John Adams, based on David McCullough's acclaimed biography, is as sumptuous and satisfying as TV gets: gorgeously produced, marvelously acted and written with a sense of high drama amid generous displays of wit.
This handsome miniseries is praiseworthy on many levels--as history, as entertainment and as a way to bring to life for new generations a sense of the sacrifice and heroism needed to establish the U.S.
John Adams is the kind of classily intelligent production that can be happily recommended to everybody. The filmmakers, including executive producer Tom Hanks, have attempted to re-create and enliven history--and they succeed grandly.
A rich, intelligent and often moving miniseries.
John Adams, a $100 million-plus production about the life and times of America's second president, is one of the most compelling miniseries of the decade.
The monumental production is worth bragging about.
John Adams is a 7 episode miniseries that begins with the trial of the Boston Massacre and ends with John Adams & Thomas Jefferson passing away on the fourth of July. In these 7 episodes you have a masterclass in what open political dialogue ought to be in what is the American political arena. Now what ought to be is not always pretty, politics and war seldom are. Yet in this miniseries we see the cultivation of ideas by men who disagreed with each other. Yes it did not cover all important aspects of Adams’s life especially involving the foundation of the United States of America, but it covered what it needed. Not only is it a celebration of the first time a colony successfully revolted against a colonial empire to establish itself as a sovereign state, but it is a celebration of the men and women who made it possible. It is not a perfect show, much of the middle chunk of the miniseries is not as invigorating as the beginning or ending. And the amount of dutch angle shots used through the entire 7 episodes would give anyone a headache, but despite all of the things that bog it down. The immersion this shows brings to the audience is an absolute rarity among miniseries; HBO has done similar ones like Chernobyl, Band of Brothers, and the Pacific. They are the best at what they do in this realm of media, and John Adams is of equal quality with those previously mentioned shows.
One of the best mini series ever, a remarkable historical drama about the Founding Fathers and their legacy.
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